Greek police attack refugees protesting fatal car accident
Greek security forces have attacked a group of refugees protesting the death of a Syrian mother and her son, which they blame on police refusal to swiftly transfer them to hospital following a car accident.
Refugees living in the camp of Oreokastro, outside the northern city of Thessaloniki, held a demonstration Sunday night after an ambulance was late to take the 35-year old woman and her 10-year old son to hospital.
After they were hit by the car outside their camp, the residents asked police to take the woman and her son to a hospital in their patrol car, but police refused.
Angry protesters then blocked the roads nearby, threw rocks and set fire to trash cans, with police using tear gas and stun grenades to disperse them.
The protesters also torched the car involved in the deadly accident. Police arrested the car’s elderly Greek driver.
A five-year old boy was injured in the clashes, the police said.
In a similar incident last month outside another camp near the town of Katerini, a seven-year old Syrian refugee girl was struck by a car and killed. Her mother and her sister were also hurt.
More than 60,000 refugees, most of them Syrians, are trapped in Greece.
They have crossed the Mediterranean Sea in the hope of reaching wealthy European countries, but they are struck in Greece as several eastern European and Balkan states closed their doors to them earlier this year.
Last year, over a million refugees entered Europe through Turkey and Greece and then made their way through the Balkans to Germany and other northern member states of the European Union.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees are still fleeing conflict-ridden zones in Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria.
Europe, which is now under fire for its anti-refugee policies, has so far refused to resettle meaningful numbers of them.
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