The violence erupted
like lava from a volcano late Sunday after members of the radical Patriotic Movement gathered on the central square of the island's main city Mytilene, where some 200 Afghan asylum-seekers launched the demonstration last week against their squalid living conditions.Despite a police presence, the situation soon escalated as members of the group threw bottles and lit flares, shouting slogans like "burn them alive" and "throw them in the sea."
Tensions spiraled further when leftwing activists arrived to defend the
The festivities raged all night until security forces used tear gas to disperse the crowd and evacuate the square, forcing the Afghans to return to their overcrowded camps.
A dozen asylum-seekers were lightly hurt and had to be taken to hospital, police said.
The mayor of Lesbos, Spyros Galinos, accused police of intervening too late, in a letter addressed to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and opposition leaders.
Galinos also criticized the government's "inertia and wrong handling" of the migrant crisis, which has "stranded thousands of people in miserable conditions in a city of 27,000."
The prime minister is due to visit Lesbos, currently home to some 6,500
More than one million people, mainly fleeing war in Syria, crossed to Greece from
...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire....
in 2015 after the onset of the bloc's worst migration crisis since World War II.
The influx has been sharply cut since the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...signed a controversial deal with Turkey in 2016 to send back
However,
a clean conscience makes a soft pillow...
more than 13,000
Greece, a country of 11 million people, recorded 58,661 asylum applications last year, making it the member state with the highest number of asylum seekers per capita, according to official data.