Reports | 25 05 2020
German Counselor Angela Merkel asks Greece to provide shelter for about 50 thousand refugees on its territory.
Turkish authorities have detained, on Saturday, about 120 Syrian migrants on the Aegean Coast in preparation for transferring them to Greece, also arrested two human smugglers there.
A source in the Turkish police, according to agency Reuters, said that "The Turkish security forces detained Syrians, mostly women and children and set them on a beach near the forest next to the village of Badimli located off the Greek island of Lesbos."
According to the agency, that "one of the smugglers managed to escape," adding that "the Turkish police confiscated about 6 mini-buses had gone to the coast."
In her turn, the German Counselor, Angela Merkel, said that “Greece has to fulfill commitments it made, by quickly providing shelter for about 50 thousand refugees,” and she urged the European Union to "help Athens in this task."
Since days ago, tens of thousands of refugees stuck in Greece, particularly near the Macedonian border, because of the Balkans tightening procedures of the immigrants from crossing its territory to Austria, Germany.
The Austrian Counselor, Werner Faymann, last week, asked Germany to receive refugees directly from the vicinity states of a Syria and from Greece, refusing to let his country being a center for the refugee’s distribution.
The United Nations said earlier, that 13 thousand and 724 people crossed the Mediterranean in the last two months of January and February, including 122 thousand and 637 has arrived in Greece, more than the number had been registered in the first half of 2015.
He pointed out that about 410 people were killed while trying to cross the Mediterranean since the beginning of the current year.
Recently, Intelligence and media reports revealed that about 200 thousand people are waiting for the weather to improve to start their journey to Europe across the Mediterranean, at a time when the Turkish government warned of a large refugee wave towards Europe in the spring.