Migrants continued flooding into Greece this week as close to 800 migrants successfully made their way from Turkey to Greece in just 48 hours, marking the highest rate of new arrivals in more than three years.
According to official data from the Greek Ministry of Citizen’s Protection, 795 new migrants and asylum-seekers made it to Greek shores between Tuesday, October 29 and Wednesday, October 30, until 12 o’clock noon, the Greek Reporter reports.
The migrants are said to have arrived mostly on boats at Alexandropouli, on the mainland, as well as on the islands of Samos and Farmakonisi in the Eastern Aegean Sea.
Greece hasn’t experienced this many migrant arrivals since 2016 – right before the EU-Turkey migrant deal came into effect.
In the first ten months of this year alone, more migrants have landed in Greece than had arrived throughout the whole of 2018.
The latest figures from the U.N. suggest that between the beginning of 2019 and last Sunday, 55,348 migrants have arrived in Greece, with 43,683 arriving by sea.
Although camp Moria on the island of Lesbos was originally designed to accommodate a maximum of 3,000 people, current figures suggest that more than 14,427 migrants are living there.
The islands of Chios and Samos hold around 5,000 and 6,000 migrants, respectively. Several thousand additional migrants are scattered across other islands and camps on the Greek mainland.
The dramatic uptick in migrant arrivals and the overcrowding of camps has led to several outbreaks of violence in the past few months.
Earlier this month, clashes between migrants and police broke out after fires were started by migrants living at Vathy camp on the island of Samos. As a result of the fires, hundreds were left without shelter.
Weeks earlier, on the island of Lesbos, two people lost their lives after migrants set fire to housing units and clashed with police at the overcrowded Moria camp.
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