According to reports by the ANA-MPA, the Greek island of Lesvos has seen an alarming influx of migrants arriving in the last 24 hours, with some 206 reaching the island’s shores from a period of Wednesday to Thursday morning.
Other Aegean islands such as Chios and Samos that have also been hit hard by the refugee crisis did not report any new arrivals.
According to authorities only 6 migrants have been returned to Turkey in the past 24 hours as a part of the EU-Turkey migrant deal that was reached in March stating that migrants who are not granted asylum in Greece can face returning to Turkey.
Following the failed military coup attempt that took place in Turkey on July 15, there is rising fear across the EU and particularly in Greece that the EU-Turkey deal could fall apart at any given moment. This could result in the eastern Greek islands seeing numbers of migrants attempting to reach the Greek shores increasing by the hundreds of thousands, according to Reuters.
To date there are over 57,000 migrants stranded in Greece living in migrant reception centers as FYROM stopped all entry of migrants into the country from the Greece-FYROM border earlier this spring. The camps on the islands are said to already be over capacity by some 2,000 migrants according to government officials.
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