Greek police flatten immigrant camp

ATHENS (Reuters/AFP) - Greek police raided an illegal immigrants camp in the port city of Patras on Sunday, moving out 150 people and levelling shacks with bulldozers. Hundreds of immigrants, mostly Afghans, had lived in squalid conditions at the camp for years, prompting protests from residents. We evacuated the camp, Thanassis Davlouros, chief of the Patras Police, told Reuters. We moved about 110 immigrants to Patras hotels and other camps in Athens and 40 minors to a special centre in northern Greece. The immigrants were mainly Afghans, Davlouros said. It was not immediately clear what would happen to them next. Around 80 police officers took part in the operation. Police said that during the operation a fire broke out and burned the camp down, but no one was injured. Two immigrants were arrested for arson. It was a small Afghan village created over the past 12 years, Christos Papaioannou, the coordinator of a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) team providing healthcare at the camp, told AFP. A large number clandestine immigrants mostly aged between 15 and 25 had lived at the makeshift camp near the port for months at a time without proper water or hygiene facilities. Estimated at 1,500 during the winter, their number had dwindled to around 200 as many were caught by police or found shelter elsewhere in town, Papaioannou said. Alongside the camp operation other teams of police on Sunday rounded up Somalis and Roma around the city, a local police source said. Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos on Sunday said new migrant reception centres would be built on the Evros border region with Turkey, on the island of Evia, in the northeastern port city of Kavala and near Patras itself. But in Patras the problem is unlikely to go away, the MSF coordinator said. Now that the camp is gone, asylum-seekers and migrants will have a tougher time finding accommodation and access to medical care, he said.

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