Fires leave migrants with little amid Covid19 fears

LESBOS: Thousands of migrants were stranded without shelter on Lesbos yesterday after fires razed their camp to the ground, and the Government said it would take days to find housing for them.

Some who fled the fires on Wednesday and Thursday tested positive for Covid19 after an outbreak of the disease in the camp, complicating attempts to round up migrants and get them into alternative accommodation.

‘‘Today, we will undertake all necessary actions to house families and the vulnerable while

been a fire at the camp. A woman was killed there last year.

Lesbos, not far from Turkey in the northeastern Aegean Sea, was the preferred entry point into the European Union in 201516 for nearly a million food distribution continues,’’ government spokesman Stelios Petsas told reporters.

Bracing for a possible surge in Covid19 cases, authorities were sending 19,000 test kits to the island.

A passenger ferry docked at the island’s port of Mytilene to house families.

The camp was quarantined last week after its first Covid19 case surfaced. Until the fire broke out, 35 migrants had tested positive and most were moved into an isolation unit in the camp.

After the blaze erupted and

Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis. The flows have been reduced significantly in recent years but thousands remain stuck there, pending a decision on their asylum request.

Without shelter for a second the camp was evacuated, only eight had been tracked down.

Yesterday, Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said all of them were missing again.

Earlier, authorities moved 406 unaccompanied children and teenagers from the camp and its poor living conditions to the mainland. But thousands more people remained stuck on Lesbos with nowhere to sleep and little to eat.

Local attitudes towards the migrants, on an island at the forefront of the European migrant crisis in 201516, have become hostile as the number of

night and residents opposing government plans to set up tents in other areas, most of the asylum seekers hope they will now be moved to the mainland.

But for now, the Greek authorities have said none of them are people in increased.

Families slept on roadsides and in fields across the island overnight after a second fire broke out at the camp on Thursday.

Government plans to find shelter for the migrants were likely to be met with resistance. Authorities were already at loggerheads with Lesbos residents over plans to replace Moria with a closed reception centre, which the residents feared would mean thousands of asylum seekers remaining there permanently. — Reuters

the camp

has

allowed to leave Lesbos.

‘‘It’s very bad now after the fire . . . but we hope that we can leave now to go to Europe,’’ Congolese woman Divine (18) said.

‘‘This place will give me nightmares.’’ — Reuters