United Nations Refugee Agency

According to five sources, as well as notes seen by BIRN written by an informant of Serbia's Military Intelligence Agency, VOA, who was allegedly also involved in smuggling, the Mesopotamia is the Serbian branch of a string of 'offices' or 'banks' along the route from the Middle East to Western Europe taken by refugees and migrants fleeing war, poverty and repression.

A dozen unaccompanied refugee and migrant minors were flown from Greece to Luxembourg on Wednesday as part of a European Union initiative to expedite the relocation of some 1,600 over the next few months to EU member-states.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) urged Greece on Feb. 7 to increase efforts to address "alarming" overcrowding and precarious conditions for asylum seekers and migrants staying on the five Aegean islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros.

Greece has received the largest number of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean this year, taking in about 45,600 out of the 77,400 arrivals. The number is larger than that received by Spain, Italy, Malta and Cyprus combined.

Local authorities on Samos have called for the immediate decongestion of migrant reception centers on the eastern Aegean island.

According to the latest data, the number of asylum seekers at centers on Samos rose to more than 4,000 at the weekend.

Of these, 3,817 live in squalid conditions at a reception center in Vathi designed to accommodate just 648 people.

Jerusalem (CNN) - Israel has agreed to cancel plans to deport thousands of migrants to third countries after striking a deal with the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Plans to expand a refugee screening center, or hot spot, on the eastern Aegean island of Chios inched forward Thursday, as police on Lesvos said they had arrested six people in the wake of riots at the island's infamous Moria facility.

At the height of Europe's recent migration crisis, more than 7,000 people landed every day at the Greek islands that face Turkey. Orange life vests covered the beaches of northern Lesvos while multiplying numbers of new arrivals slept in fields and at the island's main port.

That was the fall of 2015.

An estimated 11,000 out of more than 65,000 migrants and refugees currently in Greece are living outside state-run facilities, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The majority of migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey remain in state-run reception centers either on the islands or the mainland. But many slip through the net.

Denmark has stopped admitting the nearly five hundred refugees received via the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) every year, reported AFP.