More than 13,000 foreign nationals are temporarily housed in three eastern Aegean islands pending decisions by Greek authorities on their asylum requests, with some 7,850 hosted on Lesvos, 1,370 on Chios and 4,100 on Samos.
More than 13,000 foreign nationals are temporarily housed in three eastern Aegean islands pending decisions by Greek authorities on their asylum requests, with some 7,850 hosted on Lesvos, 1,370 on Chios and 4,100 on Samos.
More than 5,860 are housed in the notorious Moria "hotspot", a figure, nevertheless, that brings the figure under 6,000 for the first time in several months.
The migrant/refugee crisis in the eastern Aegean erupted in 2015, with migrant smuggling networks operating from neighboring Turkey ferrying hundreds of thousands of third country nationals onto Greek islands, in a bid to reach EU territory, and subsequently, preferred destinations in western and northern Europe.