Armed EU guards to patrol Greece-Turkey border

A new force of armed European guards is to be dispatched to Greece to patrol the country's border with Turkey in an attempt to stem steeply increasing illegal immigration into Europe, according to The Guardian.

The deployment of the Rapid Intervention Border Teams, assembled from the border guard forces of other European countries, will be the first time Brussels has deployed multinational armed units on the EU's external land border.

The teams are to arrive in Greece within days, the European commission announced today , although the precise numbers and makeup are yet to be decided.

A commission official said: "This is a new front. The teams are armed, but they can only use their arms in self-defence."

Struggling to cope with the hundreds of migrants who are entering Greece every day through an inhospitable, unmonitored stretch of the country's border with Turkey near the town of Edirne, Athens appealed to Brussels for help at the weekend.

"The flows of people crossing the border irregularly have reached alarming proportions," said Cecilia Malmstrom, commissioner for home affairs. "Greece is manifestly not able to face this situation alone."

Some eight out of 10 migrants entering Europe this year have arrived in Greece via Turkey, according to Brussels. Some are illegal economic migrants, at the mercy of gangs of human traffickers; many are Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers, whose treatment by the Greek authorities the United Nations and the EU regard as indefensible.

"It is an appalling situation," said the official. "The Greeks currently can't handle it. It's a small country facing huge pressure."
The numbers entering Greece this year have almost quadrupled, to around 34,000 from around 9,000 last year.