Moria camp: a fire engulfs the largest facility of its kind in Greece on the island of Lesbos

A fire destroyed the largest refugee camp in Greece, the “Moria” camp on the island of Lesbos.

Approximately 25 firefighters participated in extinguishing the fire, using 10 firefighting vehicles. Some suffocated as a result of inhaling smoke.

It was not immediately clear what caused the fire, with some charging the refugees, while others charging Greek citizens of Lesbos.

The police closed the roads around the camp to prevent refugees fleeing the fire from reaching the island’s cities.

Thousands of people are homeless as the authorities struggle to provide them with housing.

The Moria camp has around 13,000 refugees, almost four times its capacity.

According to the website “Info Migrantes”, which deals with refugee issues, 70 percent of the camp’s population is from Afghanistan, but the camp also includes people from 70 other countries.

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What happened in Moria?

In a short time, fires broke out at more than three outposts in the camp, Konstantinos Theophilopoulos, chief of the island’s fire department, told state television.

Theophilopoulos added that some refugees tried to hinder firefighters as they tried to put out the fire.

By Wednesday morning, firefighting crews had extinguished the fire, but Theophilopoulos said there were still small fires in some of the containers.

A resident of the island, Thanassis Voulgarakis, told the BBC that almost the entire camp had been burned.

He added: “In daylight, I could see that some of the tents remained intact, but the rest of the camp, based on what I could see from a distance, had been burned.”

The island’s deputy governor reportedly told a local radio station that the fire “completely destroyed (the camp).”

Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called an emergency government meeting to discuss the incident.

Authorities placed a quarantine on the camp last week after a Somali person was confirmed to be infected with the Corona virus. There are 35 confirmed cases of the virus in the camp.

How did the fire break out?

It is not clear for sure how the fire started.

Greek news agency ANA reported that the fire broke out after one of the injured refused to move to an isolation center with his family. But this information is not confirmed.

And there are already forest fires in other areas of the island of Lesbos, fueled by strong winds in the area.

The deputy mayor for civil protection, Michalis Fratzeskos, told state television that the fire was “deliberate.” He added that the refugee tents were empty and that the arsonists “took advantage of the strong winds.”

However, some refugees told the BBC that the fire broke out after clashes between refugees and security forces in the camp. Some accused the “Greek far right” of starting the fire following the detection of coronavirus cases, and took pictures of what they said were boats used to start the fire.

A government spokesman said authorities were investigating whether the fire was deliberate and a state of emergency would be declared across the island of Lesbos.

Marcus Sandron, project manager for Médecins Sans Frontières in Lesbos, told the BBC that it was difficult to determine the cause of the fire, as more than one fire had broken out in the camp at the time of the protests.

“The camp is a time bomb and it has exploded,” he added, noting that the residents of the camp lived in “inhumane conditions.”

The police prevented the refugees with luggage from entering the coastal city of Mitian. Many of them were reported to have slept in the field after the fire.

And it was reported that the mayor of the town told a local radio station: “It is a very difficult situation because some people who walk through the area are carriers of the Corona virus.”

About the Moria camp

The Moria camp is located northeast of Mytilene, the capital of the island of Lesbos.

It was built to house only 2,000 refugees, but a large number of refugees reside there. Then another camp, the “Kara Tepe” camp, was built, but there are still not enough places to accommodate everyone.

Over the years, thousands of people who arrived on the island have been transferred to the Moria camp to reside there while their asylum applications are reviewed in mainland Greece, in a slow and bureaucratic process.

The European Union tried to resettle the refugees between the different member states of the bloc. But many of the bloc’s governments rejected multiple proposals in this regard, and the refugees were stranded in miserable conditions.

Human rights organizations have been very critical of the living conditions in the countryside.

Last April, “Human Rights Watch” said that the authorities had not done enough to deal with the overcrowding of the camp and that they were not prepared for the possible spread of the Corona epidemic there.

The Greek government plans to build closed detention centers for refugees on the Greek islands. Protesters attacked authorities on Lesbos last February while transporting construction equipment into the city.