Greek police begin clearing 8,000 migrants from Idomeni refugee camp

IDOMENI , Greece, May 24 (UPI) -- Greek police began clearing about 8,000 people from the Idomeni refugee camp Tuesday morning near the Greece-Macedonia border.

The thus-far peaceful sweep of what is regarded as Europe's largest camp for those migrating to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa comes after George Kyritsis, a government spokesman, promised "no violence would be used."

"It is still early in the morning, people in Idomeni are waking up and packing their stuff to get on buses waiting to transfer them to organized facilities."

About 400 riot police entered the camp, ordered residents to leave and helped them board buses to transfer them to formal camps on retired area military bases. Some refugees still await the opening of the border, while others are reluctant to board the buses, fearing they will be locked in government-run camps.

The town of Idomeni became the crossing point into Macedonia for hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the start of travel northward through Europe. The encampment was created after Macedonia closed its border with Greece in March, and its squalid living conditions became a symbol of Europe's mismanagement of its refugee issue. A European Union agreement calls for refugees to relocate elsewhere in Europe, but member nations have been slow to welcome them. Idomeni, and other tent cities in Greece, now house about 50,000 refugees. Living conditions are dismal, and the United Nations reported in March that many suffer from respiratory problems.

Forty percent of Idomeni's residents are children.

"So far it's peaceful, and people are just moving," Loic Jaeger of Doctors Without Borders, which has had a presence in Idomeni, told the British newspaper The Guardian. "Everyone is very excited about the evacuation -- about whether it's violent or not violent -- but that's not the point. The point is that they should be in an apartment somewhere in Europe: There are only 8,000 of them. Why are we putting them in buses to put them in half-finished camps in Greece, when Europe has promised to relocate them?"