SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Turkish interior minister Suleyman Soylu said on Wednesday authorities had found the bodies of 12 migrants who froze to death near Greece.
Soylu said on Twitter that the 12 people who died were part of a larger group of 22 migrants who were stripped of their shoes and clothing by Greek border security, according to Reuters.
The Turkish minister didn’t specify the nationality of the migrants.
“Twelve of the 22 migrants pushed back by Greek border units” froze to death after being “stripped [of] their clothes and shoes”, Soylu wrote in English, AFP reported.
The “EU is remediless, weak and void of humane feelings”, he added.
Meanwhile, Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi dismissed Soylu’s remarks as “false propaganda”.
He further said Turkey needed to do more to prevent migrants from setting off from there.
“These migrants never made it to the border,” Reuters quoted Mitarachi as saying in a statement. “Any suggestion that they did, or indeed were pushed back into Turkey, is utter nonsense.”
Greece is one of the main routes into the European Union for migrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East and beyond, though the flow has tapered off since 2015-2016, when more than a million people traversed the country to other EU states.
In March 2016, the EU reached a deal with Turkey to stem the flow of refugees into the bloc and for Ankara to host Syrians fleeing the war in their country in return for billions of euros.
Turkey currently hosts some 4 million Syrian refugees, the world’s largest refugee population, as well as some 300,000 Afghans. It has said it will not accept any more migrants.
