Heartbreaking Photos Show Thousands Displaced After A Huge Fire Destroyed A Refugee Camp

Fires have ravaged Europe’s largest migrant camp, leaving about 12,000 folks with out shelter.

Fanned by excessive winds, the blaze first broke out Tuesday at Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Large stretches of the camp burned down. Only a medical facility and a few small clusters of tents had been left standing, in accordance with the New York Times. No deaths had been initially reported.

The fires continued by Wednesday, leaving many of the camp’s residents homeless. Police reinforcements had been introduced in to stop folks fleeing the fires from reaching the island’s essential city of Mytilene, Al Jazeera reported. The camp’s residents, a lot of them refugees who fled Afghanistan or Syria, have been pressured to sleep alongside roadsides and in fields and parking heaps.

The notoriously overcrowded camp had been in lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic. It is unclear how the fires began. Greek authorities stated the fires might have been lit as a protest towards obligatory quarantine measures. Some migrants instructed the BBC the fires broke out after scuffles between camp residents and Greek forces, and blamed “far-right Greeks” for the blaze.

Human rights teams warned the camp was not ready for the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of it was dangerously overcrowded, with a scarcity of entry to water, healthcare, and sanitation. Residents had protested the appalling residing situations.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis known as on the European Union to take motion to assist resolve the housing disaster. France, Germany, and the Netherlands have up to now supplied to soak up some migrants.