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Friday March 29, 2024

Greece to build new camps for asylum seekers

By AFP
March 08, 2020

ATHENS: Greece plans to build two new temporary camps to house hundreds of additional asylum seekers who arrived after a surge enabled by Turkey, the migration minister said on Saturday.

“We want to build two closed centres in (the northern region of) Serres and the greater Athens area with 1,000 places,” migration minister Notis Mitarachi told Skai TV.

“We need the backing of local communities. We cannot leave all (these) people on the islands,” he said. Mitarachi said the camps would host asylum seekers who arrived after March 1, when Turkey announced it would no longer prevent people from trying to cross into the European Union.

Residents of a town in the Serrres region rumoured to host one of the camps staged protests earlier this week and local officials declared their opposition to the plan.