A case file has opened on the serious incidents that took place from Monday evening until Tuesday morning at Panagitsa and Arnissa, Pella region, northern Greece.
A group of individuals were protesting over the settlement of migrants and refugees in the area and set fire to the hotel that would host refugees from the islands.
Protestors threw stones and other objects and did not allow to the buses with the refugees to access the area.
According to the police, 57 migrants and refugees were going to be hosted at a hotel in Panagitsa but upon their arrival some 150 protestors set fires and blocked the road while early on Tuesday they threw a flammable substance in a hotel room provoking material damages.
After Panagitsa, the migrants and refugees were led to a hotel to Arnissa where, according to police sources, approximately 250 individuals set fires on the road blocked the migrants settlement. Afterwards they attacked the hotel owners and threw stones and other objects at the hotel building.
Police considered the condition dangerous for the migrants and refugees' safety and led them to another hotel in Halkidona.
The mayor of Edessa Dimitris Giannou condemned the vandalism stating that they have nothing to do with the migration issue. Speaking to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency, he said that police reassured him that there were no migrants inside the hotel adding that "such actions do not express the majority of the people in the region."