Tear gas fired on migrant protesters demanding resettlement

Greece has warned camp residents they will not be allowed to leave Lesbos island, the protesters’ key demand.

A migrant woman and a girl react, having been cleaned with water after police threw teargas. AFP

Greek police fired tear gas on migrant protesters demanding to be rehoused in Greece and Europe after a blaze destroyed a cramped refugee camp.

The rally on Lesbos came as 10 European countries agreed to take 406 unaccompanied children who were living at the Moria camp and building work started on a new tented site.

Hundreds of migrants chanted “Freedom" and "No Camp" and carried handwritten signs carrying messages including ‘We don't want to go to a hell like Moria again’ and ‘Can you hear us Mrs Merkel?’ in an appeal to the German chancellor.

More than 12,000 people, mostly from Africa and Afghanistan, have been sleeping rough since flames swept through the overcrowded Moria camp last week.

The fire at the camp, which was holding four times the number of people it was supposed to, has returned the spotlight to the migration crisis facing the European Union, which has struggled to find a response that goes beyond temporary fixes.

Greece warned that camp residents will not be allowed to leave Lesbos, the protesters’ key demand.

"As of today, asylum seekers will start coming into the tents, into safe conditions," Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi told reporters at the site.

The 406 unaccompanied children living in the camp were flown off Lesbos on Wednesday and now Germany and France has agreed to take in about two-thirds of them.

The remainder will go to Finland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Croatia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium and Switzerland.

Still, the conditions being endured by Moria's former inhabitants in the fields and streets of Lesbos has caused some alarm in Greece.

"This is a health bomb. These people haven't even had access to water all these days, they cannot even wash their hands," Matina Pagoni, president of Athens and Piraeus hospital doctors' union, told Skai television.

Health authorities have promised to conduct rapid coronavirus tests at the entrance of the new camp, after losing track of 35 people who have tested positive.