Authorities to start evacuating Piraeus port by end of week

Greek authorities will start evacuating the port of Piraeus, which currently shelters about 4,800 migrants and refugees, by the end of the week, a government official has said.

“The availability of decent reception areas will avert violent incidents,” Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government refugee crisis committee said Monday. “We will not use violence. The people are being made to understand that they have to move out,” Kyritsis said.

Kyritsis said a new facility under construction near the Skaramangas shipyards will be ready by the end of the week. It will be able to accommodate up to 3,000 people, he said.

Meanwhile, migrants sent back from the Greek island of Lesvos began arriving in Turkey on Monday under a disputed European Union plan aimed at closing the main route by which a million people poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year.