Far-right group attacks refugee camp on Greek island

Several people were driven out of a refugee camp on the Greek island of Chios following two successive nights of attacks by a far-right group.

Attackers threw Molotov cocktails and rocks as big as boulders from elevated areas surrounding the Souda camp, injuring at least two people, activists said.

A 42-year-old Syrian man was assaulted, while a Nigerian boy was hit by a rock and three tents were burned down.

Fearing a third attack on Friday night, around 100 former occupants refused to re-enter the camp, choosing instead to take shelter in a nearby car park.

“We do not have any kind of protection,” Syrian refugee Mostafa al-Khataib told the Guardian. “No one cares about us.”

Gabrielle Tan, an aid worker with Action from Switzerland, said that the people sheltering in the car park included families with babies and toddlers.

“They’d rather sleep outside in the cold than go back inside,” she said, warning that the rocks were thrown at the camp with the intention of killing people. “These rocks were probably the size of a shoebox, weighing approximately 15kg. Some of them I can’t even lift.”

Chios mayor Manolis Vornous said that the attackers were thought to be affiliated with Greece’s main far-right party Golden Dawn. “Of course Golden Dawn supporters are suspected to have participated,” he told the Guardian.

The attacks followed a two-day visit earlier this week to Chios and the adjoining Aegean island of Lesbos by a team of MPs from Golden Dawn and far-right Belgian MPs.