Vulnerable migrants enter Greece: UNHCR

FYLAKIO, Greece: Greek officials and the UN’s refugee agency expressed concern on Friday at rising numbers of vulnerable people entering via the land border with Turkey, including families and unaccompanied children.

"The rise concerns especially unaccompanied minors," Margaritis Petritzikis, the senior UNHCR official at Fylakio camp on Greece’s northeast border with Turkey, told AFP. A third of the camp’s occupants -- 93 out of a total of 265 -- were unaccompanied minors, said camp director Irini Logotheti. But the facility can currently only hold 180 people, she added.

"We have observed that people arriving ... are vulnerable people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, with very young children," she said. In the first 10 months of the year, 11,003 people have entered Greece through the northeeastern border from Turkey: 40 percent more than during the same period in 2017, said Logotheti.

The number of vulnerable people over that period was up by 73 percent, she added. Each day, at least 60 people are forwarded to other camps around Thessaloniki or in Athens, but an equivalent number arrives to take their place, Logotheti said.