Lesbos: police operation to transfer refugees to the streets in a new camp

A police operation was underway Thursday, September 17 on the Greek island of Lesvos in order to transfer thousands of migrants to the streets from the Moria camp fire to a new emergency camp, a journalist from the AFP.

Read also: After the fire in Lesbos, Europeans faced with a new test of solidarity

At around 7:00 a.m. local time (04:00 GMT), the police moved from tent to tent, waking sleeping exiles to take them to the camp hastily erected after the fire a week ago.

Since the fire in Moria, where nearly 13,000 refugees lived in dire conditions, thousands of people had settled in makeshift shelters on a corner of the road and closed supermarket car parks.

Doctors Without Borders, which opened an emergency clinic in the area, was denied access overnight, amid rumors of evacuation, they told AFP.

“

”tweeted the NGO a little later.

The Greek authorities and the UN have been building a new camp since Saturday from which, they say, asylum procedures can resume.

But many refugees refuse to settle there, for fear of being stuck again for months awaiting a possible transfer to the Greek mainland, or another European country.

The objective of this new, "

"

camp,

the authorities promised, is that the refugees "

" or "

" the representative said on Wednesday. Greece from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Greece, Philippe Leclerc.