In the refugee camp on the Greek Aegean island of Samos, there has been a major fire. The confirmed eyewitness and the competent authorities to the SPIEGEL. According to the police burnt 30 tents, now the situation is under control again.
"The camp was evacuated," said the mayor of the island's capital Vathy, Giorgos Stantzos, the Athens news channel Skai. Around 500 refugees sought police protection in the city near the migrant camp. The fire apparently broke out in the lower part of the camp. There are gas explosions on videos circulating among asylum seekers. Many refugees have gas stoves to cook their own food so they do not have to wait in the long lines for their food.
There is a fire at #Samos hotspot, gas explosions can be heard in videos. Refugees are going down to #Vathy. Got this video-which is being circulated on WhatsApp-from one of the Afghan community leaders, he is not there right now. Video not confirmed. pic.twitter.com/o1R3GPh6Lf
- Steffen Lüdke (@stluedke) October 14, 2019How it came to the outbreak of the fire was initially unclear. According to SPIEGEL information, at around 7:00 pm in Vathy there had previously been a violent clash between Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers, in which at least three Syrians were injured. They were stabbed to the local hospital.
Nikos Kaklamanis, a doctor at the local hospital, has observed the altering according to his own statements. "I was on my way home when I saw a large group of people in the street, suddenly a fight broke out," he told the MIRROR. "I'm going to stop people right away, I screamed and they ran away, leaving injured people behind."
Later rumors made rumors in the camp, according to which a refugee would have died in the conflict. Then it came again to arguments, this time the police used tear gas to separate the migrants.
"It was to be expected that something like this would happen under these conditions"
In the so-called hotspot on Samos, only a few kilometers away from the Turkish coast, currently 5768 asylum seekers are waiting to be ferried from Turkey by boats. The camp has been hopelessly overcrowded for years, once built for only 648 people. (Read here a report on the inhuman conditions in the camp)
Since the summer months, the situation has worsened again. There are again significantly more refugees from Turkey to the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. More than 9,300 refugees arrived in August, around 12,000 in September.
This is significantly less than at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, but not as many since March 2016. From then on, significantly fewer refugees arrived in Greece because the European Union and Turkey concluded an agreement in which Turkey pledged, inter alia, to stop more refugees.
Only in September had the newly elected mayor of Samos, Georgias Stantzos, warned that the situation could spiral out of control. Security people and the population would do their best, he told the Tagesschau newspaper. "But I can not hide that we have to fear the worst that everything is going to get out of hand."
Also Nikos Kaklamanis, the Greek doctor who had first separated the refugees on Monday evening, is convinced: "It was to be expected that this would happen under these conditions."