Ninety-two migrants were found almost
naked and bruised after allegedly being forced across the Evros river from
Turkey into Greece, Athens said Sunday.

EU border agency Frontex confirmed to AFP the arrival of the group in
circumstances which the Greek ministry for civil protection said sent out an
“inhuman image.”

“The Frontex officers reported that the migrants were found almost naked
and some of them with visible injuries,” said Paulina Bakula, spokeswoman for
the organisation.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said in a tweet that it was “deeply
distressed by the shocking reports and images of 92 people, who were reported
to have been found at the Greek-Turkish land border, stripped of their clothes”.

Bakula, speaking from Frontex’s Warsaw HQ, said Frontex officers worked
with Greek authorities to provide the migrants — mainly Afghans and Syrians —
with immediate assistance.

She added the organisation had informed the agency’s fundamental rights
officer of a potential rights violation.

Greek minister for civil protection, Takis Theodorikakos, accused Turkey of
“instrumentalising illegal immigration” in the latest of a series of
recriminations on migration between the neighbours.

Theodorikakos told Skai television many of the migrants had told Frontex
that “three Turkish army vehicles had transferred them” to the river which acts
as a natural border.

Ankara denied any responsibility and Interior Minister Ismail Catakli
called on Greece to stop what in a tweet he termed its “manipulations and
dishonesty.”

Greek minister for migration and asylum, Notis Mitarachi, had Saturday
described the incident as a “shame on civilisation.”

Athens regularly faces — and denies – accusations from NGOs and media as
having on many occasions sought to push migrants back to Turkey illegally,
sometimes using force.

Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a UN address to
accuse Greece of transforming the Aegean Sea into a “cemetery” with “oppressive
policies” on immigration.