WORLD> Europe
Hundreds of immigrants poisoned at Greek centre
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-17 09:03

ATHENS -- Hundreds of illegal immigrants held in a detention centre on the Greek island of Lesbos have fallen ill after drinking contaminated water from rusty and mouldy pipes, police said on Wednesday.

Police said hospital staff rushed to provide emergency medication after the weekend incident at the centre, where medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) denounced a "humanitarian crisis" in July.

Illegal migrants, including three children and six women, sit packed on a rubber boat before being rescued by Turkish coast guards in the Aegean Sea off Dikili near Turkey's western coastal city of Izmir September 20, 2008. Turkish coast guard officials found the boat fully packed with illegal migrants who entered Turkey illegally after failing to sail to Greece. [Agencies]

"Almost all of the immigrants at the detention centre have been poisoned," a police official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

"They are in a bad condition, but they can not be transferred to hospital as they are too many and in a bad state," the official said.

About 600 immigrants, many of them from war-torn Somalia and Afghanistan, were detained on the eastern Aegean island. The police official said water pipes at the centre were old and toilets were not working properly.

Greece has been criticised internationally for the poor conditions in its six detention centres and its harsh treatment of migrants who arrived in Greece without identity papers to seek asylum from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan.

MSF ended an emergency programme at the Lesbos detention centre last month, saying Greece's conservative government was providing no support for its efforts to improve conditions there.

"We hope this will finally push the government into taking some action," said Nondas Paschos, a spokesman for MSF Greece.

Greece, with just 11 million inhabitants and one of the lowest per capita GDPs in the euro zone, is struggling to cope with a rising tide of migrants swamping its long coastline and border with Turkey. Police registered 112,000 illegal migrants last year, versus just 40,000 in 2005.

EU leaders were due to approve a new pact on immigration and asylum at a summit this week, aimed at tightening border controls and easing the repatriation of illegal migrants.