Mother gives birth in the squalor of Idomeni's tent city

[Anthea]

Mail Online

The baby born in hell: Tragic migrant mother gives birth in the squalor of Idomeni's tent city and washes the child OVER a PUDDLE

An estimated 14,000 refugees from the Syrian conflict are stuck on the Greek border with Macedonia
Macedonia president Gjorge Ivanov sealed the frontier this week claiming he was being 'flooded by jihadists'
Thousands of desperate migrants have established a tent city on the Greek border town of Idomeni
Ivanov claimed there were 20 million people looking to attempt the journey to Europe from Sudan and Egypt

This is the shocking moment a migrant mother was forced to bathe her infant child in a puddle in the Greek border village of Idomeni.
(actually the photo shows the mother holding the baby while the father pours clean water over it from a bottle that creates a puddle beneath the infant)

Several thousand migrants are stuck around the frontier as Balkan countries sealed their borders to prevent the families from continuing their journey northwards.

The mother, reported to be named Sulaf, and her one-month-old baby thought to be called Bayan, are among around 14,000 people stuck on the Greek side of the border with Macedonia.

Around 2,000 migrants a day are arriving in Greece, only a fraction of that number are leaving, with the backlog causing a major problem. In the camp in Idomeni, there have been fights among refugees as aid organisations tried to distribute supplies and food.

Over the past week, some 70 children at the camp have been hospitalised suffering from fever and diarrhoea. The shocking image of the infant being washed in a puddle was taken on March 6. Since then, conditions have deteriorated further.

Bayan was born about 20 days ago, in Samos, Greece after the family made the crossing from Turkey having fled the Syrian city of Idlib, Elespanol reported.

He was staying in the tent with his mother Sulaf, 33, his father Ali, 36, and siblings Ahmad, 10; Bisan, 8; Khaled, 6; and Muhammad, 1.

In the days following the photo, which was taken on March 6, the family moved to another tent closer to the border.

Iker Pastor, the photographer, told MailOnline: 'The picture was done on a Sunday, the 6th of March (I think), and I say I think because I have done many pictures and two weeks in Idomeni is a lot of time.

'They were living in a tent next to the border gate of the Greek Macedonian border. The moment happened very fast. Believe me, very fast. I was there with other colleague and just were a few seconds, not more than a minute.

'The parent took the baby outside and started to wash him with a bottle of a water. Later they went fast to the tent and closed it, and we couldn't ask anything.'

He said he viewed it as an 'act of love' between the parents and the child, and said it had taken place near to the fence with Macedonia.

'They were very close to the border gate and the fence. And of course, [it was] overcrowded, because all of the people. In the situation, [everyone] wanted to be close to the border and that area had especially a lot of tents.'

The camp has been hit by torrential rain over the past few days making it difficult for the migrants to start fires.

Government health experts at the camp say there is no sign yet of an infectious disease outbreak, but have been urging refugees at Idomeni to move to nearby army-built shelters.

At the nation's main port of Piraeus, near Athens, authorities began transporting hundreds of migrants and refugees to shelters in central Greece to try to ease overcrowding there.

The government says nearly 42,000 people are stranded in Greece following border restrictions and closures by Austria and several Balkan countries that started last month.

According to the International Organisation of Migration, 148,866 people have arrived in Europe by sea from Africa, Asia and the Middle East since January 1.

Five migrants, including a three-month-old baby drowned when a speedboat taking them from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos. Nine people, believed to be Afghan and Iranians were rescued from the water.

The president of Macedonia has defended his decision to close the border, claiming his country would have been 'flooded with jihadists'.

Gjorge Ivanov spoke out as 14,000 migrants desperate to make the journey through his country to Germany were stuck in a refugee camp at the border with Greece.

Macedonia shut its borders this week as countries along the route tried to halt the increasing flow of people, to criticism from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

President Ivanov told the German Bild newspaper: 'Between Sudan and Egypt alone, 20million migrants who want to go to Europe are waiting. And what about Africa? The stream of refugees will not end.'

He said Macedonia, which has a population of just over two million, has been left to deal with the EU's crisis, adding: 'If we had trusted Brussels and had not reacted on our own initiative, we would already have been flooded with jihadists.'

Mr Ivanov said security forces had seized 9,000 false passports. 'We have to assume that many of these people who were travelling with forged papers want to enter the EU via the refugee route as radical fighters,' he said.

He added: 'Europe does not function in a crisis situation ... Some countries along the Balkans route like us had to act on their own.'

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