Pope Francis wants to take back to the Vatican a number of refugees after his landmark visit Saturday to the island of Lesbos, an official of Greece's state refugee coordination agency said.
Around 700 migrants have agreed to leave a squalid camp on Greece's border with Macedonia since violence broke out at the weekend when a group of migrants tried to storm the frontier, sources said Tuesday.
The Italian coastguard Monday rescued 1,850 migrants in eight operations in the Strait of Sicily, as a wave of boats departing from the Libyan coast intensifies.
At least 260 people were hurt Sunday when police fired tear gas at migrants as they tried to break through the Greek-Macedonia border, where over 11,000 people are stranded, a charity said.
Pope Francis will make a lightning trip to the Greek island of Lesbos on April 16, the Vatican said on Thursday, in a visit aimed at supporting refugees and drawing attention to the front line of Europe's migrant crisis.
Several dozen migrants being detained at a holding camp on the Greek island of Lesbos protested behind the barbed wire fence of the compound on Tuesday, shouting ‘We want freedom!’
Greece sent a first wave of migrants back to Turkey on Monday under an EU deal that has faced heavy criticism from rights groups.
Turkey has made preparations to take in up to 500 migrants from Greece on Monday under a plan agreed with the EU to reduce the flow of illegal migration, the Turkish interior minister said.
The EU will unveil plans to overhaul its asylum system this week following a controversial migrant deal with Turkey, but the proposals look set to trigger fresh rows in a bloc already deeply divided by the refugee crisis.
Turkey's Coast Guard stopped 63 Palestinians and Syrians trying to cross to a Greek island on Saturday, underlining the scale of the security forces' task in convincing illegal migrants they won't be allowed into the EU.
Turkey has begun work on two centres to process Syrian and other migrants after they return from Greece under a deal with the EU which comes into force next week, local officials and reports said Saturday.
Three migrants were hospitalised after a brawl in a camp on the Greek "hotspot" island of Chios, the ANA news agency said, as the country prepared to begin returning migrants to Turkey under an EU deal.
