Thousands homeless as blaze guts Greece’s main migrant camp

LESBOS ISLAND, Greece: Greece’s Lesbos island was plunged into crisis on Wednesday after thousands of asylum seekers were left homeless from a huge fire that gutted the country’s largest and most notorious migrant facility, Moria camp.

The civil protection agency declared a four-month emergency for the island of 85,000 people and Germany urged EU states to take in the camp’s survivors.

EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson said the bloc would finance “the immediate transfer and accommodation on the mainland of the camp’s remaining 400 unaccompanied children and teenagers.”

Norway on Wednesday offered to take in 50 Syrians from Moria — though Greece has currently banned the camp’s former residents from leaving the island.

An exception will be made for the 400 minors, a migration ministry source told state agency ANA. The blaze started just hours after the migration ministry said that 35 people had tested positive at the facility, among 2,000 tests conducted on residents and staff.

The UN refugee agency said it had deployed staff to assist Greek authorities, noting that there were over 4,000 children among the displaced in addition to pregnant women and

elderly people.

The Moria camp, built to hold fewer than 2,800 people, has been routinely criticised by rights groups and the UN refugee agency for a lack of sanitation and overcrowding.

“It is high time that EU countries work with the Greek government to urgently relocate refugees and asylum-seekers not only to the Greek mainland but also to other EU countries,” the International Rescue Committee said in a statement.

Greek spokesman Stelios Petsas warned that authorities faced a “titanic” effort to shelter asylum seekers rendered homeless by the blaze, as well track down and isolate dozens of confirmed coronavirus infections among them.

Moria had already been placed in quarantine until September 15 with only security personnel granted access after temperature tests.

Moria camp had reported its first coronavirus case last Wednesday.

Migrant facilities on the islands have endured months of lockdowns as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with access severely restricted.

But at Moria, the restrictions have been harder to enforce because of the large number of asylum seekers sleeping outside the camp’s walls.

The government has in recent months moved thousands of refugees from Lesbos and other islands to the mainland.

But many refugees have been unable to find lodgings and jobs after leaving the camps, with housing and cash benefits recently scaled back by the government.