Migrant influx takes toll on Greek island
Lesbos running out of space to bury those killed trying to reach Europe
The Greek island of Lesbos has run out of room to bury the bodies of migrants who have died trying to reach Europe, the island’s mayor said Monday.
Spyros Galinos, the mayor of Lesbos, an island in the eastern Aegean with a population of 86,000, said there were more than 50 bodies in the morgue for which the authorities were still trying to find burial locations. Galinos added that he was trying to fast- track procedures so a field next to the main cemetery could be taken over for fresh graves.
“Our island, our home, has caught fire, and when your house catches fire you call the fire brigade. But after that you don’t just step out for coffee. You also pitch in to put it out,” Galinos said.
“We did that, then desperately waited for ( government or EU) support — for the fire brigade to arrive. But it is not coming.”
Ambulance workers on Lesbos Monday protested state budget cuts that have left only three vehicles in operation despite the massive daily influx of refugees, many of whom need urgent medical attention. The drivers held a demonstration in the island’s capital of Mytilene, then handed out clothes to refugee children.
Costas Filis, head of the island’s ambulance workers’ association, said that five ambulances were awaiting repairs and that staff shortages had forced rescuers to work up to 16 hours at a time.
Hundreds of thousands of people have made the short but dangerous crossing from Turkey to Greek islands this year. But more than 70 people, many of them children, have died in the past week when the flimsy boats carrying them across the sea overturned.
With seas having become rougher during the autumn, the bodies of 19 people were recovered from the Aegean in three separate incidents on Sunday alone. Greece’s coast guard also said that it had rescued more than 1,400 people in 39 search- and- rescue operations in the eastern Aegean last weekend, where high winds caused rough seas.
In the worst single incident, authorities increased to 43 the number of deaths from last week’s sinking of an overloaded wooden boat carrying more than 300 refugees and economic migrants from Turkey to Lesbos.
The coast guard said Monday that rescuers have recovered the bodies of 20 children, 17 men and six women who drowned after the battered vessel capsized off the eastern Aegean Sea island in rough seas Oct. 28.
A total of 274 people survived the accident, which was the worst in Greek waters during the mass refugee influx.
More than 218,000 people arrived in Europe by sea in October — all but 8,000 of them landing in Greece — according to UN data, the highest monthly total on record and more than during the whole of 2014.
The massive influx despite cooling weather and choppy waters highlights the strains that European policy- makers and authorities have been under with the unprecedented flood of people fleeing countries including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan through Turkey to Greece this year.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 600,000 people have now crossed the Mediterranean this year.