Greece closes border with Turkey: They will not enter the country
Greece closed the Kastanies border crossing with Turkey today after a large number of migrants tried to enter the country, ANA reports.
Source: Tanjug
Greek police reinforcements were deployed to the country's border crossings with Turkey earlier today to prevent migrants from entering Greece.
Several dozen people were amassed on the land border at Kastanies, north-east Greece, between the two countries with Greek police preventing access.
“They will not enter the country. They are irregular migrants, we won’t let them enter,” a government official told Reuters. Groups of migrants in Turkey headed toward its borders with Greece and Bulgaria on Friday, Reuters reporters said, after a senior official said Ankara will no longer abide by a 2016 EU deal and stop refugees from reaching Europe.
He stated this after Turkey reported that 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in an air strike by Syrian government forces in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region, Reuters reports.
Greek government sources said the country has tightened control of maritime and land borders with Turkey after last night's developments in the Idlib region, which Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced yesterday.
Mitsotakis said the measure was needed to prevent the coronavirus from reaching the Aegean island, where thousands of migrants live in very poor conditions as they wait for their asylum applications to be processed. Turkey already hosts some 3.7 million Syrian refugees and has repeated that it cannot handle more.
Under a 2016 deal, the European Union has provided billions of euros in aid in return for Ankara agreeing to stem the influx of migrants into Europe.
