Vrasna

The owners of a complex of rented rooms, where refugees and migrants were accommodated, in Vrasna, Thessaloniki, were handed a suspended 2.5-year prison sentence over the death in April 2019 of a 4-year-old refugee boy who was crushed while playing next to a sliding metal door.

The government's plan to house migrants and refugees in hotels on the mainland as part of ongoing efforts to relieve pressure on camps on the islands appears to have hit a hurdle after several hoteliers refused to participate in the housing program drafted by the Citizens Protection Ministry and opposition from local residents.

Authorities were forced to abandon plans to house about 400 refugees in a small seaside village in northern Greece on Tuesday night, after residents vehemently opposed their settlement in local hotels.

The refugees, who had been transferred from an overcrowded camp in Samos to the mainland, travelled with eight buses to the village of Vrasna, northeast of Thessaloniki.