Evros

Greece received on Friday nine expressions of interest for the long-term operation of its biggest motorway Egnatia, part of a privatization scheme launched under its bailout program.

At least three people were killed and four missing after a boat carrying eight undocumented migrants capsized in the River Meriç (Maritsa or Evros) in Turkey’s northwestern Edirne province on Feb. 12, a spokeswoman for Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Organization (AFAD) said on Feb. 14.

Authorities said on Thursday that two Syrian men were arrested in Nea Kerdylia in Serres, northern Greece, on charges of smuggling 21 asylum seekers, including 10 minors.

Police said they are working on the assumption that the the two men, aged 20 and 17, are members of a wider people trafficking network.

Authorities in northern Greece on Friday were seeking to identify a man who drowned in the Evros River, apparently while trying to cross from Turkey into Greece.

The body of the man was recovered from the river by Greek border guards on Thursday afternoon.

Greek police say the body of a man believed to be a migrant has been found in an abandoned building in a mountainous border area in northern Greece.

Greece's privatization agency on Friday opened a tender procedure for a concession to run Egnatia Odos, a motorway running from west to east in northern Greece.

The contract is part of a privatization process launched by Greece under a multi-billion euro bailout accord with international lenders.

The factory of packaging company Maillis in the industrial zone of Alexandroupoli is likely to shut down, according to the president of the Evros Labor Center, Efstathios Aspiotis.

Aspiotis told regional media he had received information that owner HIG Luxembourg Holdings is preparing to shut down the plant, which has 59 employees, by February 2018.

Northern Greek manufacturing industries have suffered considerably in the last few years, with hundreds being forced to shut down, according to data presented at the Thessaloniki Summit.

The risk of forest fires across the country is very high on Monday, according to the General Secretariat for Civil Protection which highlighted the prefectures of Attica, Evia, Viotia, Fthiotida, Fokida, Larissa, Magnisia, Corinthia, Argolida, Arkadia, Lakonia and Hania as the most vulnerable - at level 4.

Two Turkish nationals serving life sentences who escaped from a prison in Kasandra, Halkidiki, in northern Greece, on Thursday were located in Evros in the early hours of Tuesday, police said.

Officers from the precinct in Feres, near the Turkish border, found the two fugitives at around 4 a.m.