Turkey detains 1300 migrants in sweep

And talks on Turkey potentially joining the European Union will be restarted.

Volunteers help around 150 refugees and migrants, mostly from Syria and Iraq, to disembark from a vessel after their arrival from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015.

Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said however that he could not guarantee effective action.

“The numbers of women and children continue to climb, which is for us quite honestly something of a surprise, and we can only assume that this is a sense of the despair that families are going through”, said Sarah Crowe, UN spokeswoman.

The suspects included mainly Syrians and Greeks. Police also seized four boats and six motors and found the body of a dead man.

Despite the Turkish crackdown, local authorities told Greek newspaper Kathimerini that migrants continue to arrive on Lesbos saying that more than 5,000 arrived in the past two days. The International Organization for Migration said nearly 900,000 people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have entered Europe this year seeking sanctuary or jobs.

The central European neighbours restated their opposition to German-led plans to cope with some 900,000 people who have arrived in Europe so far this year, as migrants again clashed with police on the border between Greece and Macedonia.

Turkey will receive around 22 billion kroner from the European Union countries to help handle the 2.2 million Syrian refugees who are in Turkey.

The idea was floated by Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel and commission president Jean-Claude Juncker at a mini-summit of eight countries on Sunday.

As most refugees reach first Greece from Turkey on their journey to northern European countries, a scheme to resettle people direct from Turkey could make the earlier plan redundant.