by Anthi Pazianou, Maria Spiliopoulou
LESVOS, Greece, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Five police officers were slightly injured and some 30 protesters were detained on Tuesday after a stormy protest inside Moria refugee camp on Lesvos island, according to local authorities.
Calm was restored after a group of migrants and refugees scuffled with police forces protesting against living conditions and delays in the assessment of asylum bids.
Most camp residents involved in the clashes were African nationals, police sources told Xinhua, as it had happened on July 10 when a similar riot broke out in the same refugee center.
On Tuesday, hundreds of refugees, including parents holding babies in their arms and elderly, left Moria, as protesters pelted rocks at police officers who used teargas to disperse the crowd and the Fire Brigade was extinguishing a fire in nearby olive groves.
According to police sources, protesters had started the fire as a distraction and were obstructing fire fighters. Eventually the blaze was put out by water dropping aircrafts, local Fire Brigade said.
"If it wasn't for the aircrafts, our farmland would have been scorched," Yannis B., a local farmer told Xinhua.
Last week five container units and three tents were destroyed by protesters, while last September a large section of the hotspot was destroyed by fire during another stormy protest.
Currently approximately 3,000 people are housed in Moria and more than 4,000 throughout Lesvos island. Many are stranded there since March 2016 after the closure of borders along the Balkan route to central Europe, when the European Union (EU)-Turkey agreement aimed to stem the refugee flows into Europe came into force.
Refugees and migrants are hosted in Moria's closed camp until their cases are assessed. Those who are not granted asylum are returned to Turkey, under last year's deal.
More than 60,000 people have been stranded in Greece and are hosted in accommodation centers and apartments throughout the country, according to official data released on Monday by the Greek Ministry of Migration Policy in Athens.
Although the living conditions of refugees and migrants have improved over the past year, and the number of arrivals has dramatically dropped after the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement, there are still problems to be addressed in overcrowded centers on the Aegean Sea islands, such as Lesvos, according to officials.
Refugees and migrants complain about delays in the evaluation process of their bids.
According to figures released on June 20 by the Greek migration policy ministry on the occasion of World Refugee Day, since 2015, a total of 87,939 asylum requests have been assessed in Greece.
More than 2,000 individuals have been sent back to Turkey from Greece or willingly repatriated since the start of the EU-Turkey agreement, according to data released by Greece's Public Order ministry.
