Out of protest against government plans to build a network of detention camps on the Greek Aegean islands to replace overcrowded existing ones, hundreds of islanders on Thursday demonstrated in central Athens. They announced legal challenges and obstruction of the construction of the new facilities.
UNHCR is appealing to Greek authorities to increase efforts to put an end to "alarming" overcrowding and precarious conditions for migrants staying on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos, and Leros.
In Vathy, in the overcrowded migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, news agencies are reporting that riots have broken out. Fires were started and the police were met with stones and protests when they arrived to break up the unrest.
Greece is living a new migrant crisis. The number of people arriving, mainly on the islands close to Turkey, has more than doubled since July. The reception facilities on these islands are now massively overcrowded and conditions are deteriorating for the migrants and also for the islanders. John Laurenson sent this Postcard from Samos.
At least three people were hurt in a clash between asylum seekers in a town on the Greek island of Samos. After mass violence erupted and fires broke out in the severely overcrowded migrant camp, Greek authorities evacuated the camp.
The constant influx of refugees and migrants by boat to the shores of Greece's eastern Aegean islands from Turkey continues at an alarming rate this week, with close to 700 people arriving on Lesbos, Chios, and Samos in the past 48 hours.
Greece is set to open two new "transit camps" on the mainland to speed up transfers of migrants and refugees from its islands. The initiative is an attempt to reduce overcrowding in the camps on Lesbos, Chios and Samos.
Authorities say EU border agency Frontex has provided the Greek coast guard with a crewless airship to help combat irregular immigration and to augment search and rescue operations in the eastern Aegean Sea, where close to 20,000 migrants are staying in overcrowded camps on Greek islands. Separately, police found nearly 130 migrants in vehicles and detained two smugglers in two unrelated incidents, one in Greece and one in North Macedonia.
The Catholic Community of Sant'Egidio in Rome is promoting an initiative thanks to which 150 volunteers, together with a group of cultural mediators, will take turns to spend the summer with refugees on the Greek islands of Lesvos and Samos. The initiative runs through August 31.
The Aita Mari was supposed to run search and rescue missions in the Central Mediterranean. But the Spanish government denied the ship permission to do so and blocked it from setting sail for months. That's why the crew decided to go on an aid mission in Greece instead.
Spanish charities including Proactiva Open Arms received the green light to set sail from the port of Barcelona on Wednesday. Instead of returning to the central Mediterranean to save migrants, the NGOs will deliver aid supplies to migrants on the Greek islands.
One woman reportedly died as a boat overturned on the rocky coast of the Greek island of Samos. 50 migrants survived.