Orestiada

Europol officers with expertise in curbing organized crime will be dispatched to Evros, in northern Greece, to help the Greek Police (ELAS) crack down on increasingly active international migrant smuggling rackets.

Greek authorities say dozens of asylum-seekers have turned up at the home address of European border agency employees helping police the border with Turkey.

A Hellenic Air Force officer and a British national who were detained on Sunday after allegedly taking photographs of military installations in a restricted area near the Evros border with Turkey will remain in police custody in the town of Orestiada until they appear before an investigative magistrate Wednesday, according to reports Tuesday.

A Hellenic Air Force officer and a British national who were detained on Sunday after allegedly taking photographs of military installations in a restricted area near the Evros border with Turkey will remain in police custody in the town of Orestiada until they appear before an investigative magistrate Wednesday, according to reports Tuesday.

A court of appeal in Greece's border city of Orestiada on Jan. 8 decided to acquit a Turkish worker who unintentionally crossed the border with an excavator in May 2018.

Police authorities are searching for a woman and her two underage children who went missing as they tried to cross Evros river in Greece's border region with Turkey on Wednesday.

The number of irregular migrants crossing the Meriç (Evros or Maritsa) River to enter Greece from Turkey has more than doubled in the first nine months of 2018, compared with the whole year of 2017.

As the coast guard on Wednesday searched for two people missing from a boat that sank while crossing the Evros River from Turkey earlier this week, authorities in the northeastern Greek region warned of a serious spike in illegal arrivals. 

More than 10,000 migrants and refugees arrived in Greece from Turkey through the northern Evros river crossing in the first half of 2018, a non governmental organisation said on Thursday, a quicker pace of arrivals compared to 2017.

The figure outstrips an estimated 7,500 of arrivals from Evros in 2017 overall, a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Greece official told Reuters.

Four Turkish nationals appeared Friday before a prosecutor in Orestiada, northeastern Greece, after being arrested Thursday in a forbidden military area in Evros, the river border separating Greece from Turkey.