DANGEROUS CROSSING

Meanwhile the flow of people risking the dangerous journey on flimsy boats across the Mediterranean shows no sign of abating, as they flee the four-year-old civil war in Syria that has killed about 250,000 civilians, and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa.

On the Greek island of Lesbos, about 500 Afghans protesting at lengthy identification procedures scuffled with police. A ferry took 1,744 migrants and refugees to Athens from Lesbos on Sunday and another one with 2,500 on board was expected later in the day, the coastguard said.

A record 50,000 people hit Greek shores in July alone, and were ferried from islands unable to cope to the mainland. There, a government in financial crisis is keen to dispatch them into Macedonia, from where they enter Serbia and then Hungary.

More than 2,000 have died at sea in the Mediterranean so far this year. The Cypriot coastguard picked up 114 Syrian refugees on Sunday who were adrift in a fishing boat.