Greece starts emptying border camp as new arrivals slow

Greece said today it has begun emptying the main migrant camp on its border with Macedonia, as the huge tide of refugees flooding into the country slows to a trickle following the EU-Turkey deal.
Eight buses transported around 400 refugees from the Idomeni camp yesterday, while another three buses left on today, taking them to other camps set up in northern Greece, local police said.
Those persuaded to board the first buses were mainly parents with children who can no longer tolerate the difficult conditions in the squalid camp.
Janger Hassan, 29, from Iraqi Kurdistan, who has been at the Idomeni camp for a month with his wife and two young children, said he will probably leave too.

"There's nothing to do here. The children are getting sick. It's a bad situation, the last two days it's windy, sometimes it's raining here," he told AFP.
"We don't have a choice. We have to move."

But some are still holding out at Idomeni.
"People who have no hope or have no money, maybe they will go," said 40-year-old Fatema Ahmed from Iraq, who has a 13-year-old son in Germany and three daughters with her in the camp.
"But I have hope, maybe something better will happen tomorrow, maybe today," she added.
Today, inside one of the soaking tents of the camp, a 24-year-old woman travelling from Kobani with her two little girls, gave birth to another baby girl.

According to Athens News Agency, the woman was helped by the charity Doctors of the World during her labour that lasted just half-an-hour and was then taken to a hospital with her baby.
A total of around 11,600 people remained at the sprawling border camp today, according to the latest official count.
Giorgos Kyritsis, spokesman of the SOMP agency which is coordinating Athens' response to the refugee crisis, said the operation to evacuate Idomeni will intensify from Monday.
"More than 2,000 places can be found immediately for the refugees that are at the Idomeni camp and from Monday on this number can double," Kyritsis said, pledging to create 30,000 more places in the next three weeks in new shelters.

Meanwhile, the flow of refugees arriving in Greece has been slowing dramatically.
Greece on Thursday said no migrants had arrived on its Aegean islands in the previous 24 hours, for the first time since the controversial EU-Turkey deal, under which all migrants landing on the Greek islands face being sent back to Turkey, went into effect on Sunday.