Fire Compounds Misery At Lesbos Camp, In Photos

The skeletal steel tent frames, their coverings and contents lowered to ash, poked out of the panorama. A twisted and blackened fan hung from what was as soon as a ceiling. And all over the place, there have been individuals, clinging to small luggage of belongings or establishing makeshift beds on the aspect of the street, unsure the place to show subsequent.

These have been the scenes within the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos after a major fire broke out Tuesday night, adopted by one other two the next evening. Nearly all of the camp was destroyed within the fires, displacing 12,000 residents. However lengthy earlier than the fires, the scenario in Moria had been dire for the tens of hundreds of refugees and migrants who lived in squalid, overcrowded circumstances that got here to be emblematic of Europe’s damaged migration system.

Since 2015, the camp on the tiny island has been crammed with refugees and migrants who had risked every little thing to flee battle and hardship for a greater life, solely to seek out themselves in limbo on the sting of Europe, ready for asylum. Rights teams had warned that the location was a looming humanitarian disaster.

Now that disaster has arrived, and Greek and European authorities are scrambling to give you a plan to discover a new, short-term residence for hundreds of individuals, most of whom are Afghan refugees who had sought to achieve northern Europe.

With nowhere to go after the primary hearth, hundreds of individuals unfold out mattresses on the aspect of the street to sleep Wednesday evening, huddled below blankets alongside their meager belongings. That evening, into Thursday, extra fires broke out, burning down a number of the final tents nonetheless standing.

Whereas little stays of what was as soon as Europe’s largest refugee camp, the issue of what to do with its hundreds of residents has solely begun.