Tag Archives: Greece

Shackled remains at ancient Greek site tell tale of intrigue

Skeletal remains, with iron shackles on their wrists, are laid in a row at the ancient Falyron Delta cemetery in Athens, Greece,

By Deborah Kyvrikosaios

ATHENS (Reuters) – At least 80 skeletons lie in a mass grave in an ancient Greek cemetery, their wrists clamped by iron shackles.

They are the victims, say archaeologists, of a mass execution. But who they were, how they got there and why they appear to have been buried with a measure of respect – that all remains a mystery.

They were found earlier this year in part of the Falyron Delta necropolis – a large ancient cemetery unearthed during the construction of a national opera house and library between downtown Athens and the port of Piraeus.

Few people have been able to get in to have a close look.

But on a rare tour of the site, archaeologists carefully showed Reuters the skeletons, some lying in a long neat row in the dug-out sandy ground, others piled on top of each other, arms and legs twisted with their jaws hanging open.

“They have been executed, all in the same manner. But they have been buried with respect,” Dr. Stella Chryssoulaki, head of excavations, said.

“They are all tied at the hands with handcuffs and most of them are very very young and in a very good state of health when they were executed.”

The experts hope DNA testing and research by anthropologists will uncover exactly how the rows of people died. Whatever happened was violent – most had their arms bound above their heads, the wrists tied together.

But the orderly way they have been buried suggest these were more than slaves or common criminals.

COUP PLOT?

The cemetery dates from between the 8th and 5th century BC.

“It is a period of great unrest for Athenian society, a period where aristocrats, nobles, are battling with each other for power,” said Chryssoulaki.

One of the strongest theories is that they were supporters of Cylon, an Athenian noble and Olympic champion who staged an attempted coup in Athens in 632 BC with the help of his father-in–law, the tyrant of Megara.

The coup failed and Cylon hid in a temple of the Acropolis. He managed to escape, but the people who backed him were killed.

“Perhaps with the DNA tests that we will do on these skeletons we may confirm or not this hypothesis that these deceased, these young people could be … part of a coup … an attempt by a noble to take power by force,” said Chryssoulaki.

More than 1,500 bodies lie in the whole cemetery, some infants laid to rest in ceramic pots, other adults burned on funeral pyres or buried in stone coffins. One casket is made from a wooden boat.

Unlike Athens’ renowned ancient Kerameikos cemetery, the last resting place of many prominent ancient Greeks, these appear to be the inhabitants of regular neighborhoods.

The dig is within a 170,000 sq m landscaped park, shadowed by the vast new modern library and opera house buildings being built by the Stavros Niarchos philanthropic foundation.

High-rise apartments dot the skyline to the north while a noisy motorway snakes by the site’s east side.

Chryssoulaki wants to see a museum built on the spot, as a monument to the daily lives of Athenians from another era.

“A cemetery is a first and last photograph in antiquity of those people that pass from life to death,” she said.

(Editing by Michele Kambas and Andrew Heavens)

EU proposes new asylum rules to stop migrants crossing Europe

Migrants who will be returned to Turkey demonstrate inside the Moria registration centre on the Greek island of Lesbos,

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission proposed more unified EU asylum rules on Wednesday, in a bid to stop people waiting for refugee status moving around the bloc and disrupting its passport-free zone.

In an unprecedented wave of migration last year, 1.3 million people reached the EU and most ignored legal restrictions, trekking from the Mediterranean coast to apply for asylum in wealthy Germany, prompting some EU countries to suspend the Schengen system that allows free passage between most EU states.

“The changes will create a genuine common asylum procedure,” said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. “At the same time, we set clear obligations and duties for asylum seekers to prevent secondary movements and abuse of procedures.”

The proposal would standardize refugee reception facilities across the bloc and unify the level of state support they can get, setting common rules on residence permits, travel papers, access to jobs, schools, social welfare and healthcare.

It would grant prospective refugees swifter rights to work but also put more obligations on them, meaning if they do not effectively cooperate with the authorities or head to an EU state of their choice rather than staying put, their asylum application could be jeopardized.

The five-year waiting period after which refugees are eligible for long-term residence would be restarted if they move from their designated country, the Commission said.

The plan, which will now be reviewed by national governments and the European Parliament, comes after the Commission proposed in May a system for distributing asylum seekers around the bloc, an idea that angered eastern EU states which refuse to take in refugees.

Only 3,056 people have so far been relocated under the scheme that was meant for 160,000 people, the Commission said. Hungary and Slovakia have challenged the quotas for receiving asylum-seekers in the courts.

Asked whether Brussels would punish countries, that also include Poland and the Czech Republic, for not complying with the relocation quotas, Avramopoulos said: “Were not here to punish, we are here to persuade. But if this persuasion doesn’t succeed, then yes, we’re thinking of doing that. But we’re not there yet.”

SAFE LIST

Last year’s record arrivals triggered bitter political disputes in the EU, where the wealthier states that ended up hosting most of the people accused the newer members in the east of showing no solidarity.

A deal with Turkey in March has since cut the arrivals to Greece to a trickle but has prompted concerns about human rights.

Unlike the Turkey route, however, which mainly brought Syrians and other people with a strong cases for asylum into Europe, the bloc is now worried over a rise in arrivals from Africa through Libya. Most people on that route do not qualify for asylum and, under the EU rules, should be sent back.

The Commission wants to draw up lists of “safe countries” outside the bloc, which would help EU states return people, after Athens’ refusal to recognize Turkey as such a place hindered deportations from the Greek islands back to Turkey.

To discourage chaotic flows by facilitating legal migration, the Commission also proposed an EU-wide system for resettlement directly from refugee camps. It said Brussels would pay 10,000 euros for each person EU states bring in.

But Slovakia, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, was skeptical on chances for unified asylum system.

“We can only talk about real burden-sharing when the quality of life is the same in all EU states,” said Bernard Priecel, head of Slovakia’s migration service. “Otherwise we will always have secondary movements. How can you force them to stay?”

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Greece want to send thousands of migrants back to Turkey

People make their way inside the Moria holding centre for refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece wants to dramatically escalate returns of migrants to Turkey in the coming weeks under a European Union deal with Ankara, the migration minister said on Friday, amid criticism it has been too slow to process them.

The deal, which has been lambasted by rights groups and aid agencies, is aimed at closing off the main route into Europe, used by around a million refugees and migrants last year. It obliges Greece to return those who either do not apply for asylum or have their claims rejected.

Officials say about 8,400 migrants are currently on Greek islands, nearly all of whom have expressed interest in applying for asylum, overwhelming the system.

Greece says that, so far, it has deported 468 people back to Turkey, none of whom had requested asylum. Just two Syrian refugees have been ordered back from Greece to Turkey and they are appealing against the decision in the Greek courts.

Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas said Greece wanted to send thousands of migrants who arrived by crossing the Aegean Sea back to Turkey within weeks if they did not qualify for asylum in Greece.

“It would constitute failure if, within the next month-and-a-half, those who are obliged to leave the islands didn’t do so,” Mouzalas told Greek TV.

Asked how many people that amounted to, Mouzalas said “more than half” of the migrants currently there.

The minister’s comments came a day after parliament voted an amendment replacing two members of an asylum appeal board with judges.

Previously, the panel was made up of one civil servant, one member appointed by the national human rights committee, and a representative of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

EU officials had called on Greece to think about whether the committee should comprise civil society members rather than judges.

Unrest in Greek island camps boiled over earlier this month as migrants stranded there since March brawled with each other and set tents on fire.

Medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Friday it would reject all funding from the European Union and its member states in protest at the EU-Turkey deal, which its International Secretary General said was “jeopardizing the very concept of the refugee.”

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; editing by John Stonestreet)

U.N. urges Greece to improve poor living conditions for refugees

A refugee woman hangs clothes to dry at the sun after heavy rainfall at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees near the village

ENEVA (Reuters) – Refugees in some sites in Greece are cramped in “sub-standard conditions” in poorly ventilated “derelict warehouses and factories”, with insufficient food, water, toilets and showers, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.

“We urge the Greek authorities, with the financial support provided by the European Union, to find better alternatives quickly,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a briefing.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Migrants stranded in Greece take to fields to avoid state run camp

A migrant woman with a child sits in a bus after a police operation to evacuate a migrants' makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

By Phoebe Fronista

IDOMENI/EVZONI, Greece (Reuters) – They packed up their belongings and began to walk, some heading for the fields, others to a gas station, all seeking to avoid going to state-run Greek migrant camps where they fear they will end up trapped.

For months they had been living in Idomeni, a sprawling expanse of tents on Greece’s northern border with Macedonia and a symbol of human misery until police and bulldozers began clearing it on Tuesday.

More than 8,000 people, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, had been living there, hoping to reach northern Europe like the nearly a million migrants and refugees before them. But they got stranded in Greece after borders closed down across the Balkans.

The Idomeni camp was nearly empty on Thursday but only about 2,400 people have been relocated to state-run facilities, according to police.

Instead, dozens of tents have sprung up at gas station in the town of Evzoni, some six 6 km (4 miles) away, and dozens more were being pitched in a grassy field nearby.

Diar, an 18-year-old Syrian, said he woke up on Thursday to Greek police asking him to get on a bus to an official camp, so he made his own way out of there instead.

“I’m looking for a smuggler,” he said. “Everyone here is trying to get a smuggler and move from here, by plane or by walking, or anything else.”

Greek officials have not released figures on how many people may have left on their own accord.

Aid groups say the new sites, including some in disused warehouses and industrial zones, are not fully functional. They have called on Greece, which is also grappling with its worst economic crisis in generations, to improve conditions there.

The government says there are still more than 54,000 migrants on Greek soil. Asylum requests have spiked in recent months, adding to the burden of an asylum service already criticised as slow and inefficient.

Progress has also lagged on a scheme to redistribute 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU states to alleviate pressure on the two frontline countries. Just over 1,100 people have been relocated so far.

“This is not just about survival. Sites must provide for refugees’ basic needs,” said Rowan Cody, northern Greece field coordinator for the International Rescue Committee aid group.

“Increasing desperation is already leading to spikes of violence and an increase in mental health issues. How much more can these people bear?” he asked.

One Syrian refugee who left Idomeni for the barren field in Evzoni with his wife and two daughters said he refused to go to an official camp as he had been told of overcrowding.

“There is no place for us and there is not enough food and aid and medicine. People are cramped on top of each other and, at the same time, there are same problems as the previous camp,” he said.

“I don’t want to go and get squeezed among people and in the end, we still don’t know what our fate will be.”

(Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Clearout of Greek refugee camp should reopen economic artery

People walk through fields after they were sent out during a police operation to evacuate a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

By Lefteris Papadimas and Angeliki Koutantou

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Greece has sent in police and bulldozers to clear out Europe’s biggest refugee camp because of the deteriorating humanitarian conditions there, but the operation should also unblock a vital artery for the ailing economy.

Greece lies at the epicenter of two of the biggest challenges facing Europe – a migration influx and a debt crisis.

The Idomeni camp, recently home to as many as 8,000 migrants and refugees, had spread out across a railway track on the Macedonian border, choking off Greece’s main rail route to the rest of Europe. It has also complicated the privatization of the country’s rail freight business, a condition of its international bailout.

Greek authorities said 2,031 refugees were removed from the makeshift camp on Tuesday and the rail tracks were fully cleared on Wednesday. But they have not said when the train link, which is vital to the freight firm TRAINOSE, will reopen.

“This should have happened a long time ago,” said Anastasios Sachpelidis, a local transporters’ association representative. The closure was “a big loss,” he said. “We lost clients, we lost money, time and our credibility.”

Heavily indebted Greece clinched a deal with international lenders in the early hours of Wednesday to unlock desperately needed new bailout loans on the condition it fulfils certain terms, including speeding up privatizations.

Athens has agreed to sell off an array of assets, including TRAINOSE and its maintenance company ROSCO. The deadline for potential investors to submit final bids was originally in April, but has been pushed back twice, and is now set for June 22.

The privatization agency has said investors needed more time to prepare their bids.

“The camp has been blocking a route of the Greek supply chain which has taken several decades to be established,” said a senior executive at an Athens-based rail freight company, who declined to be named, citing political sensitivities.

“As long as Greece’s main cargo rail conduit to Europe is closed, it is obvious that TRAINOSE’s value is falling and the company is less attractive to investors,” the executive said.

The government has not publicly said what it hopes to raise from the sale but sources close to the process said the figure was expected to be in the region of about 50 million euros ($55.7 million) for TRAINOSE and ROSCO together.

WASTELAND

More than a million people escaping poverty and war in the Middle East and beyond have entered the European Union via Greece since the beginning of last year, many of them heading north en route to Germany.

But Europe’s borders have slammed shut in a concerted effort to halt the influx and some of those left in limbo have pitched tents on muddy wasteland outside the town of Idomeni.

The makeshift camp, home mostly to Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, sprang up four months ago. Human rights groups have raised alarm about the deteriorating conditions there, including overcrowding, poor sanitation and the risk of infection.

Many children slept in the open, scuffles broke out over food, and Macedonian forces tear-gassed migrants trying to storm past the razor-wire border fence.

“No one came here on purpose to close the railway,” said Farshad, 43, from Syria. “We are not demonstrating here. We just live on the tracks because the conditions are better.”

The rail line at the border was shut down in March due to the refugee camp. This followed a previous closure in November, when a separate group of Moroccan, Iranian and Pakistani migrants blocked traffic, demanding passage to Western Europe.

TRAINOSE is the sole provider of passenger and freight services in Greece and made a net profit of 1.47 million euros in 2014, according to its latest financial results.

Greece last month received expressions of interest in the firm from Italy’s state railways, Russian Railways (RZD) and Greek construction group GEK-Terna.

DELAYS, COSTS

When the Idomeni border was open, roughly eight freight trains ran daily back and forwards to central Europe, in total. At present, just four trains run a longer route through neighboring Bulgaria, meaning higher transport costs for Greek importers and exporters.

A train pulling 34 cars would normally cost up to 50,000 euros ($55,700) to transport a cargo into central Europe in two to three days. But the longer route is causing delays of up to 12 days, which is lifting the cost by almost 20 percent, said the executive of the Athens-based freight company.

An exporters association in northern Greece, representing some 500 businesses, said the situation at Idomeni had stunted efforts to kickstart the economy after six years of recession.

“The direct extra cost for our members have totaled about 5 million euros so far,” said the association head, Kyriakos Loufakis.

TRAINOSE’s biggest client in Greece, Chinese shipping giant China COSCO, took over the operation of two of Greece’s Piraeus port container terminals in 2009 via its Greek unit Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT).

It uses Piraeus to transport Asian products to central Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovakia, by sea and rail.

“Anything that obstructs this process is a problem for us,” said Tassos Vamvakidis, the commercial manager of PCT.

Greece’s state railways company OSE threw up a barbed wire fence parallel to the railway tracks at Idomeni on Tuesday to prevent people moving onto the line.

But the executive of the Athens-based rail freight company said that once the camp was fully evacuated it would still take up to 10 days to fully restore rail traffic.

“We had the route closed in November, reopened and then closed again four months later. Who can assure potential suitors that this won’t happen again in July?”

($1 = 0.8976 euros)

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou and Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Pravin Char)

Greece starts moving migrants camped at border to state facilities

A refugee and a child warm themselves next to a bonfire next to tents set next to a gas station near the village of Idomeni

By Phoebe Fronista and Fedja Grulovic

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Greek police on Tuesday started moving some of the 8,000 migrants and refugees stranded in a makeshift camp on the sealed northern border with Macedonia to state-run facilities further south.

Several busloads of people, most of them families with children, left the sprawling expanse of tents at Idomeni early on Tuesday and about a dozen more buses were lined up ready to take more, Reuters witnesses said.

At the latest tally, about 8,200 people were camped at Idomeni. At one point more than 12,000 lived there after several Balkan countries shut their borders in February, barring migrants and refugees from central and northern Europe.

Greek authorities said they planned to move individuals gradually to state-supervised facilities further south which currently have capacity of about 5,000 people. The operation is expected to last several days.

“The evacuation is progressing without any problem,” said Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman for the migrant crisis. People would be relocated “ideally by the end of the week,” he said. “We haven’t put a strict deadline on it.”

A Reuters witness on the Macedonian side of the border said there was a heavy police presence in the area but no problems were reported as people with young children packed up huge bags with their belongings.

Media on the Greek side of the border were kept at a distance. Inside the Idomeni camp, police in riot gear stood guard as people from the camp boarded the buses, footage by the state broadcaster ERT showed. Some 1,100 refugees and migrants had been relocated by noon, Greek police said.

A police official said about 1,000 people were blocking the sole railway tracks linking Greece and Macedonia. Protesters demanding passage to northern Europe have for weeks blocked the route, forcing trains to divert through Bulgaria to the east. Some goods wagons have been stranded on the tracks for weeks.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) urged Greece to refrain from using force during the transfer of the migrants and refugees.

“It’s important that organised movements are voluntary, non-discriminatory and based on well-informed choices by the individuals,” spokesman Adrian Edwards told a briefing in Geneva.

International charity Save the Children said it was concerned about a lack of basic services such as bathrooms and shelters in the official camps.

“Many of the children, especially lone children, have been through enough trauma already,” said Amy Frost, team leader in Greece.

“Now that the evacuation has started, it is paramount that authorities make it a priority to keep families together, and to ensure that children are being transferred to facilities where they can live in conditions that meet European and international standards for child welfare,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Angeliki Koutantou in ATHENS and Stephanie Nebehay in GENEVA; Writing by Michele Kambas and Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Greece to begin evacuating migrants camped at border within days

A woman holding an umbrella walks in a flooded field during heavy rainfall at a makeshift camp for refugees and migrants at the Greek-Macedonian border

THENS (Reuters) – Greece will begin in the coming days to evacuate a makeshift camp on its northern border with Macedonia where thousands of migrants and refugees have been stranded in dire conditions for months, the government said on Monday.

The sprawling camp in a field near the Greek town of Idomeni sprang up in February after border shutdowns across the Balkans left the people stranded there. They had mostly been heading for Germany and other wealthier northern European countries.

The migrants, mostly from conflict zones in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have refused to move despite having to sleep in the open in very difficult conditions or being tear-gassed by Macedonian police. They have largely ignored appeals by Greek authorities to move to organized camps set up around Greece.

Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman for the migration crisis, told state TV the evacuation process would begin “tomorrow, the day after and will be completed in a week, at most 10 days”.

Asked if the government planned to remove all 8,000 people estimated to be living in the camp, Kyritsis said: “Yes. A thing like Idomeni cannot be maintained. It only serves the interests of smugglers.”

A police source said 50 riot police squads would be deployed to Idomeni for the gradual removal of the migrants starting from Tuesday evening. Some 2,000 people who have been blocking the railtrack on the border will be removed first, the source said.

The tracks have been blocked by the migrants for more than a month, forcing trains to re-route through Bulgaria further to the east. Some wagons loaded with goods have been stranded on the tracks at Idomeni for weeks.

Kyritsis said that while the government did plan to reopen the railway it was not planning a police sweep operation at the camp.

“Removing all the refugees from the disgrace which is Idomeni is in their own interest. The railtrack will open for the train to pass through normally but the fundamental thing is for the people to be transferred to where the conditions are humane.”

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris and Theodora Arvanitidou; Editing by Gareth Jones)

EgyptAir jet missing after mid-air plunge

Unidentified relatives and friends of passengers who were flying in an EgyptAir plane that vanished from radar en route from Paris to Cairo react as they wait outside the Egyptair in-flight service building where relatives are being held at Cairo International Airport, Egypt

By Lin Noueihed and Lefteris Papadimas

CAIRO/ATHENS (Reuters) – An EgyptAir jet carrying 66 passengers and crew from Paris to Cairo disappeared from radar over the Mediterranean sea on Thursday after swerving in mid-air and plunging from cruising height. French President Francois Hollande confirmed the aircraft “came down and is lost”.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail announced a search was under way for the missing Airbus A320 but it was too early to rule out any explanation, including an attack like the one blamed for bringing down a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula last year.

Officials with the airline and the Egyptian civil aviation department told Reuters they believed the Airbus had crashed into the Mediterranean between Greece and Egypt.

In Athens, Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said the Airbus had first swerved 90 degrees to the left, then spun through 360 degrees to the right. After plunging from 37,000 feet to 15,000, it vanished from Greek radar screens.

Greece deployed aircraft and a frigate to the area to help with the search. A defense ministry source said authorities were also investigating an account from the captain of a merchant ship who reported a ‘flame in the sky’ about 130 nautical miles south of the island of Karpathos.

According to Greece’s civil aviation chief, calls from Greek air traffic controllers to the jet went unanswered just before it left the country’s airspace, and it disappeared from radar screens soon afterwards.

By early afternoon, the search in the Mediterranean had yet to turn up anything. “Absolutely nothing has been found so far,” a senior Greek coastguard official told Reuters.

There was no official suggestion of whether the disappearance was due to technical failure or any other reason such as sabotage by ultra-hardline Islamists, who have targeted airports, airliners and tourist sites in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and other Middle Eastern countries over the past few years.

The aircraft was carrying 56 passengers – with one child and two infants among them – and 10 crew, EgyptAir said. They included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals, along with citizens of 10 other countries.

Asked if he could rule out that terrorists were behind the incident, Prime Minister Ismail told reporters: “We cannot exclude anything at this time or confirm anything. All the search operations must be concluded so we can know the cause.”

In Paris, Hollande also said the cause remained unknown. “Unfortunately the information we have … confirms to us that the plane came down and is lost,” he said. “No hypothesis can be ruled out, nor can any be favored over another.”

With its archeological sites and Red Sea resorts, Egypt is traditionally a popular destination for Western tourists. But the industry has been badly hit following the downing of the Russian Metrojet flight last October, killing all 224 people on board, as well as by an Islamist insurgency and a string of bomb attacks.

NO RESPONSE

Greek air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot as the jet flew over the island of Kea, in what was thought to be the last broadcast from the aircraft, and no problems were reported.

But just ahead of the handover to Cairo airspace, calls to the plane went unanswered, before it dropped off radars shortly after exiting Greek airspace, Kostas Litzerakis, the head of Greece’s civil aviation department, told Reuters.

“During the transfer procedure to Cairo airspace, about seven miles before the aircraft entered the Cairo airspace, Greek controllers tried to contact the pilot but he was not responding,” he said.

Greek authorities are searching in the area south of the island of Karpathos without result so far, Defence Minister Kammenos told a news conference.

“At 3.39am (0039 GMT) the course of the aircraft was south and south-east of Kassos and Karpathos (islands),” he said. “Immediately after, it entered Cairo FIR (flight information region) and made swerves and a descent I describe: 90 degrees left and then 360 degrees to the right.”

The Airbus plunged from 37,000 feet (11,280 meters) to 15,000 feet before vanishing from radar, he added.

Egyptian Civil Aviation minister Sherif Fathi said authorities had tried to resume contact but without success.

“NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING”

At Cairo airport, authorities ushered families of the passengers and crew into a closed-off waiting area.

Two women and a man, who said they were related to a crew member, were seen leaving the VIP hall where families were being kept. Asked for details, the man said: “We don’t know anything, they don’t know anything. No one knows anything.”

Ayman Nassar, from the family of one of the passengers, also walked out of the passenger hall with his daughter and wife in a distressed state. “They told us the plane had disappeared, and that they’re still searching for it and not to believe any rumors,” he said.

A mother of flight attendant rushed out of the hall in tears. She said the last time her daughter called her was Wednesday night. “They haven’t told us anything,” she said.

EgyptAir said on its Twitter account that Flight MS804 had departed Paris at 23:09 (CEST). It disappeared at 02:30 a.m. at an altitude of 37,000 feet ) in Egyptian air space, about 280 km (165 miles) from the Egyptian coast before it was due to land at 03:15 a.m.

In Paris, a police source said investigators were now interviewing officers who were on duty at Roissy airport on Wednesday evening to find out whether they heard or saw anything suspicious. “We are in the early stage here,” the source said.

Airbus said the missing A320 was delivered to EgyptAir in November 2003 and had operated about 48,000 flight hours.

The missing flight’s pilot had clocked up 6,275 hours of flying experience, including 2,101 hours on the A320, while the first officer had 2,766 hours, EgyptAir said.

At one point EgyptAir said the plane had sent an emergency signal at 04:26 a.m., two hours after it disappeared from radar screens. However, Fathi said later that further checks found that no SOS was received.

FRANCE, EGYPT TO COOPERATE

The weather was clear at the time the plane disappeared, according to Eurocontrol, the European air traffic network.

“Our daily weather assessment does not indicate any issues in that area at that time,” it said.

Under U.N. aviation rules, Egypt will automatically lead an investigation into the accident assisted by countries including France, where the jet was assembled, and the United States, where engine maker Pratt & Whitney is based.

Russia and Western governments have said the Metrojet plane that crashed on Oct. 31 was probably brought down by a bomb, and the Islamic State militant group said it had smuggled an explosive device on board.

That crash called into question Egypt’s campaign to eradicate Islamist violence. Militants have stepped up attacks on Egyptian soldiers and police since Sisi, then serving as army chief, toppled elected President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist, in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.

In March, an EgyptAir plane flying from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked and forced to land in Cyprus by a man with what authorities said was a fake suicide belt. He was arrested after giving himself up.

EgyptAir has a fleet of 57 Airbus and Boeing jets, including 15 of the Airbus A320 family of aircraft, according to airfleets.com.

(Additional reporting by Amina Ismail, Ali Abdelatti, Mostafa Hashem, Asma Alsharif, Victoria Bryan, Siva Govindasamy, Sophie Louet, Tim Hepher, Michele Kambas, George Georgiopoulos, Renee Maltezou, Brian Love and Miral Fahmy.; Writing by Lincoln Feast, Samia Nakhoul and David Stamp; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Paul Tait and Peter Graff)

U.N. urges Greece to stop detaining migrant children

Refugee girl with umbrella

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – A top United Nations official urged Greece on Monday to stop detaining refugee and migrant children, some of whom are locked up in police cells for weeks, and to develop child protection services instead.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Francois Crepeau, said he had met unaccompanied children held in police stations for more than two weeks without access to the outdoors, and “traumatised and distressed” by the experience.

Others were with their families in overcrowded detention centres, where inter-communal frictions and contradictory information created “an unacceptable level of confusion, frustration, violence and fear”, he said.

“Children should not be detained – period,” said Crepeau, on a fact-finding mission in Greece from May 12 to 16.

“Detention should only be ordered when people present a risk, a danger, a threat to the public and it has to be a documented threat, it cannot simply be a hunch.”

Crepeau said children and families should be offered alternatives to detention. He urged authorities to develop a “substantial and effective” guardianship system for unaccompanied minors and increase the shelter capacity for them.

More than a million migrants, many fleeing the Syrian war, have arrived in Europe through Greece since last year. More than 150,000 have arrived in 2016 so far, 38 percent of them children, according to U.N. refugee agency data.

Greece, in its sixth year of economic crisis, has struggled to cope with the numbers.

International charity Save the Children says an estimated 2,000 unaccompanied children who travelled alone to Europe or lost their families on the way are stranded in Greece and only 477 shelter spaces are available across the country.

(Unaccompanied minors) are put in … protective custody and the only place there is space (for them) is the cell in police stations and that’s where we find them quite often,” Crepeau said.

“Spending 16 days (in a police cell) is way too long. What is needed is specialised body of competent professionals who can take care of unaccompanied minors.”

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; editing by Andrew Roche)