New way of migrants and refugees, mostly coming from Syria, is expected to reach the Macedonian border to the south. Greek media repored that around 5 in the morning, the ferry Elifterios Venizelos, carrying 2500 migrants, set off from Mitilini to the island of Lesbos. The ferry is expected to reach Piraeus today around 5:40. From the port, the migrants will climb buses and trains towards Thessaloniki and from there to the border with Macedonia.
Greek newspaper Katimerini published an article titled “Many leave and just as many arrive on the islands.” The number of migrants that is leaving is replaced by even more people who are lining up on the Turkish coast to come to Greece.
The Proto Tema newspaper reports that at the moment, only on Lesbos there are 9500 migrants who are waiting to be transported to Athens.
The International Migration Organization (IMO) in Turkey is calling upon information of the General Directorate of Migration Management of the Turkish Ministry of Interior, estimates that there are 1.9 million refugees and migrants in the country.
From the start of the year according to the IMO, about 135,000 migrants reached Greece from Turkey. In the coming days it is expected there will be additional cruisers, ships, ferries and trains which will relax the pressure that the migrants are experiencing in the Greek south. On Friday night the Greek government made a decision to employ two large ships for the transport of migrants.
The decision of the Government to proclaim an emergency situation, on Wednesday, August 19, due to the large inflow of migrants, is still in force. This was confirmed for Meta by the Macedonian Ministry of Interior. In the next few days there will be meetings on a regional and EU level that will discuss the refugee crisis.
