Overwhelmed Greece boosts migrant response amid exodus warning

Greek officials on Tuesday rushed to open new centres to process thousands of migrants arriving on the country's already overwhelmed islands as EU President Donald Tusk warned the refugee "exodus" could last for years.

With the country's migration minister admitting that the island of Lesbos was "on the verge of explosion", authorities opened a new centre to process the 30,000 refugees the UN said are stuck there and on other Aegean flashpoints, with Athens promising more for other bottlenecks.

Hours earlier, a handful of coastguards and riot police armed with batons had struggled to control some 2,500 migrants in Lesbos's main port, screaming "keep back" as the crowds surged towards a government-chartered ferry bound for Athens.

"It was horrible the last three days... There are no rooms, no hotels, no bathrooms, no beds, no anything," said Hussam Hamzat, a 27-year-old engineer from Damascus who finally got his departure papers Tuesday after an overnight wait.

The scenes of chaos underscored the difficulty authorities across Europe find themselves in as they struggle with the wave of people trudging across the continent fleeing war and misery in their home countries.

With EU land borders also at breaking point from huge build-ups of refugees, Tusk insisted "the wave of migration is not a one-time incident but the beginning of a real exodus, which  means that we will have to deal with this problem for many years to come."

As the desperate plight of migrants touches hearts around the world, Britain, France and even South American countries have pledged to accept tens of thousands of the refugees.

Venezuela said it would accept 20,000 -- the same number that Britain has promised to take over five years -- while Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff declared migrants would be welcomed there with "open arms", and Chile's leader Michelle Bachelet said it "was working to take a large number".

Canada's Quebec province also said it will take 3,650 this year.

Germany, Europe's top economy, has said it can take some 500,000 refugees annually for a few years, with Chancellor Angela Merkel saying the influx would result in profound change in the country.

- 'On verge of explosion' -

"I stayed here eight, nine days -- oh my God, I can't even remember," said Aleddin, an engineering student hoping to join his brother in Germany, as he languished in Lesbos.

"Some people have been here for 14 or 15 days. The government doesn't care."

Hours after another 61 migrants were rescued off the island, junior Greek interior minister Yiannis Mouzalas told To Vima radio the port of "Mytilene currently has 15,000 to 17,000 refugees... The situation is on the verge of explosion."

Evangelos Meimarakis, leader of Greece's right-wing New Democracy party which could return to power in this month's snap election, said the country should strengthen its borders so as not to give "the message that 'It's good over here, come over'."

In Hungary, scores of migrants broke through a police line near a refugee centre and marched towards Budapest Monday before agreeing to turn back, while police in Denmark closed down a motorway in the south as crowds made for the Swedish border.

Elsewhere on Europe's borders, the poor and desperate kept coming, both on the land corridor through the Balkans and on overcrowded boats across the Mediterranean.

On Greece's frontier with Macedonia, tensions were running high as at least 8,000 people waited to enter the former Yugoslav republic after 2,000 made the crossing on Monday.

Libyan coastguards said they had rescued more than 120 migrants aboard a rubber dinghy, adding to the 366,402 people the United Nations estimates have crossed the Mediterranean this year -- around half of them Syrians.

Turkey, meanwhile, detained a fifth trafficking suspect over two boat sinkings last week, including the one which claimed the life of three-year-old Syrian Aylan Kurdi, pictures of whose lifeless body washed up on a beach shocked the world.

- Schengen 'collapse' -

Tusk said in a speech in Brussels that the "exodus" meant Europe had "to learn how to live with it without blaming each other".

The EU has been riven by divisions on how to cope with the crisis, with countries like Germany urging more solidarity and some eastern nations such as Hungary taking a hardline approach.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker is expected Wednesday to unveil a plan that would see Germany take more than 31,000 migrants, France 24,000, and Spain almost 15,000, a source told AFP.

French President Francois Hollande warned the core ideal of open borders within the EU was at stake.

"If there is not a united policy, this mechanism will not work," he said, referring to the passport-free Schengen zone across much of the continent.

Merkel, whose country is Europe's top refugee destination, hailed as "breathtaking" the warm welcome given to the more than 30,000 migrants who arrived there over the weekend.

Her coalition government has pledged six billion euros more in funding to house them.

Source: AFP