European Border and Coast Guard Agency

Officials in Athens are trying to make sense of what they see as erratic behavior emanating from Ankara, which on the one hand is requesting a moratorium on military exercises in the Aegean due to the coronavirus pandemic, and on the other is continuing its tactic of low-level tensions regarding the Greek islands.

Turkish soldiers fired at least one warning shot and aimed at German guards patrolling the border with Greece in the northeastern region of Evros on April 28, according to a report by German magazine Der Spiegel published on Thursday (May 30).

The Civil Aviation Authority announced on Wednesday that it would extend a ban on commercial flights to and from six countries until May 15 as part of the measures to halt the spread of the coronavirus in Greece.

According to the notice to airmen (NOTAMS) issued by the authority, the ban concerns Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany.

The Hellenic Coast Guard has increased the number of patrols along Greece's eastern sea border amid reports that refugees and migrants are moving en masse by bus from inland camps in Turkey to the coast opposite the Greek islands of Chios, Lesvos and Kos, stoking fears of a repeat of what happened in February at the Evros land border and in the eastern Aegean.

Europe's coast guard agency said on April 12 it was looking for a dinghy believed to be carrying dozens of migrants when it went missing after setting sail from Libya for Italy.

The U.N. refugee agency told AFP it was "very worried" about the fate of what could be 85 migrants lost in the Mediterranean Sea.

The European Union Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX) is currently working on guidelines to uniformly implement the recommendations of the European Commission regarding the temporarily restriction of non-essential trips to the European Union of the third-country's citizens, the Strategic Communication Group (GCS) informed.

Guards and police holding the northeastern Greek land border with Turkey thwarted what authorities say was an organized push to breach the frontier in the early hours of Wednesday.

EU border agency Frontex said on Friday it had deployed an additional 100 border guards to Greece's northeastern border to assist in the country's efforts to prevent migrants trapped in the buffer zone from entering its territory.

Citizens' Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis and Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri were at the Kastanies crossing on the Greek-Turkish border at Evros on Thursday morning to oversee the deployment of dozens of guards from the European border agency.

Frontex's plan to assist Greece in guarding its borders with Turkey shortly after the country filed a request for support last August was discussed in an exclusive interview by Kathimerini with the French executive director of the European Union's External Borders Agency, Fabrice Leggeri.