Mytilene

The government on Friday began transferring a total of 604 migrants from the islands of Samos, Chios and Lesvos to closed facilities on the Greek mainland.

The transfer concerns people that entered Greece iafter March 1, 2020, when the government decided to suspend the asylum procedure for all new arrivals amid an influx of arrivals from the coast of Turkey.

A total of 450 migrants who arrived in Lesvos after March 1 will be transferred by navy ship to closed camps on the mainland ahead of their deportation, Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis said in a television interview on Saturday.

Seven residents of Lesvos have been indicted to appear before a prosecutor at the island's main port of Mytilene in connection with an attack on two volunteer workers for the Swiss "One Happy Family" whose recreation facilities for migrants on the island were destroyed last week in a fire whose cause is still being investigated.

On this International Women's Day I'm thinking about the thousands of women at Moria who struggle every day against the odds to stay healthy, feed their children, keep their dignity and survive to see a better day.

A 40-year-old woman on the island of Lesvos has been admitted to hospital after showing symptoms similar to the coronavirus, according to local media reports.

More than 2,000 refugees and migrants, holding their belongings, gathered at the main port of the island of Lesvos on Tuesday afternoon, following a rumor that a passenger ferry would transport them to the mainland.

February 2016: Four platoons of riot police are dispatched to Kos from Athens. Dozens of residents on the eastern Aegean island block the road leading to the village of Pyli with rocks and fires, as they oppose the construction of a migrant identification and reception center in the area. They clash with police, who use tear gas to disperse the protesters.

Between September 2019 and January 2020, the government transferred 14,750 people to the mainland, even as 36,000 new arrivals crossed the Aegean to Greece from Turkey, according to UNHCR data.

The regional governor of the Northern Aegean, Kostas Moutzouris submitted a new call on Wednesday to declare a state of emergency on three islands, following two days of protest marches by asylum seekers demanding better living conditions and a quicker asylum procedure, and attacks by extremists in Lesvos.

Migrants stranded on Lesvos protested against the dreadful conditions at the Moria reception center and the slow processing of asylum requests for a second day Tuesday as the government turned down a request for a state of emergency to be declared on the eastern Aegean island.