Greece can provide shelter for 70,000, says Mouzalas

Greece’s minister for migration says the government can provide shelter space for up to 70,000 migrants – roughly double the current number of people stranded in the country.

Ioannis Mouzalas told the Austrian newspaper Wiener Zeitung in an interview published Tuesday that the country could not indefinitely expand capacity at shelters and camps being built by the armed forces.

“We currently have 33,000 refugees and migrants in Greece. If there are 50,000, we will provide accommodation for 50,000. If there are 70,000, then 70,000,” he said.

Asked if the country could go beyond that number he replied: “No.”

Mouzalas said he was “deeply saddened” by Europe’s refugee crisis, which he viewed as a “humiliation and degradation of human life.”