20 December 2017•Update: 21 December 2017
By Tony Rigopoulos
ATHENS
Violence reportedly broke out late Tuesday at the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.
According to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (AMNA), serious clashes erupted between Arab, Afghan and Iraqi refugees.
An unknown number of injured have been transferred to a hospital, while numerous reports said ambulances and fire trucks were rushing to the scene.
Riot police in charge of security issues at the camp have reportedly used teargas to quell the clashes, with major media outlets in Greece calling it a "warzone situation".
Clashes between refugees are not rare at the camp, but the latest bout of violence has reportedly been much more intense.
The situation at Moria refugee camp has been deteriorating by the day. Around 5,500 people are currently living there under extremely harsh conditions. In a report published Monday by U.S. media outlet BuzzFeed News, Moria was characterized as “one of Europe’s worst refugee camps”.
“On Lesbos, more than 5,400 people live in overfilled tents and containers with limited access to appropriate housing, food, water, sanitation, healthcare or protection. Dozens of people, among them very young children, are crowded into tents,” Amnesty International, along with other organizations, said in a letter addressed to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in October this year.
“Those conditions will have devastating consequences for the well-being of the people trapped there,” the letter concluded.
