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Wednesday, May 6, 2015

At Greek port, migrants dream and despair in abandoned factories

By Yannis Behrakis PATRAS, Greece (Reuters) - Rapper Mahdi Babika Mohamed's journey to a better life in Europe started in his native Sudan and passed through Libya and Turkey before abruptly ending in a squalid abandoned factory at Greece's western port of Patras. There, the 37-year-old is one of hundreds of migrants making desperate attempts to board ferries to Italy by hanging on to the underside of cargo trucks - usually unsuccessfully. "Every day I try to get on the ferry and it's dangerous hiding under the trucks, I could die any minute." Patras is no longer on the frontline of Greece's migrant crisis as it was six years ago when authorities shut down a makeshift camp in the port where hundreds of migrants had lived in squalid conditions. Focus has since shifted to the thousands of Syrian and other migrants now breaking through Greece's eastern sea border, but the refugee problem in Patras is far from over.


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT uk.news.yahoo.com