Video footage has emerged of war-like scenes on the Greek land border with Turkey as over 700 migrants attempted to illegally cross the border.
The footage allegedly shows the results of migrants from the Turkish side of the border using Molotov cocktails and setting fires along the Greek border fence in an effort to break through into Europe between Wednesday and Thursday.
The clip also purports to show a gas being fired at the Greek border, newspaper Proto Thema reports, and comes after the Greek government last week accused Turkey of supplying migrants with tear gas canisters at the border area.
According to the Greek paper, incidents of violence and provocation have significantly escalated within the last 24 hours including a Turkish vessel colliding with a Greek coastguard patrol boat and two Turkish F-16 jet fighters flying at low level above Greek territory. The newspaper alleged the aircraft were harassing a Greek helicopter operating in the area.
Greece has accused the Turkish government of several other incidents at the border earlier this week, including alleging that a Turkish vehicle attempted to tear down parts of the border fence to help migrants get across the border.
From 6 am Wednesday to 6 am Thursday, a total of 741 migrants attempted to cross the fortified border. Three of the migrants were taken into custody by Greek forces, two of those migrants coming from Tonga and the other from Pakistan.
The arrests highlight previous claims by the Greeks that very few of the migrants attempting to get into their country are from Syria, as previously claimed by the Turkish government and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Turkish leader walked out of a meeting with European Union leaders earlier this week when no resolution to the ongoing migrant issue was agreed upon and went on to slam the Greek border guard as being no different from Nazis.
“There is no difference between what the Nazis did and the images we are seeing from the Greek border,” he said.
Earlier in the week, Erdogan also announced a migrant summit would be held in Istanbul on the 17th of March and that French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel would attend.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, however, has not been invited.