2,000 migrants moved from Greek border camp

Greek police transferred some two thousand migrants out of the overcrowded camp of Idomeni, launching a major operation to clear up the squalid tent city where thousands fleeing war and poverty have lived for months.

The operation began at dawn on Wednesday, and by evening officials said they had put 2,031 people on buses to newly opened camps near Greece’s second city Thessaloniki, about 80 kilometres to the south.

“The operation will continue today,” Greece’s migrant crisis coordination office said in a statement. The group transferred on Tuesday included 662 Syrians, 1,273 Kurds and 96 Yazidis. A hundred of them refused to enter the new centre and headed off by foot to downtown Thessaloniki, a police source said.

The camp on the Macedonian border has become a potent symbol of human suffering and chaos as Europe struggles with its worst migrant crisis since World War II.

The Greece-Macedonia border is one of several in the Balkans closed since mid-February as countries on the migrant route have sought to halt the influx.