Police said yesterday they had broken up an international criminal organisation smuggling migrants and refugees through Greece, one of the main gateways into the European Union.

Officers arrested 12 people from Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq and Syria in raids on apartments and other locations across Athens early on Sunday and confiscated hundreds of fake identity cards, passports and other documents, the force said.

The smugglers were divided into six units which helped migrants travel from Turkey via the Greek island of Kos on to Macedonia and Italy on planes, buses and trains, the statement said.

Police attached an organisation chart of at least 30 suspects, plus an unknown number of associates in Turkey, drawn up after what they called one of their biggest operations against people smugglers.

The gang gave fake asylum registration documents to migrants arriving on Kos in exchange for about 3,000 each, the police added.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees - mostly from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq – have crossed the Aegean Sea this year from Turkey, attempting a short but risky trip in wooden boats or rubber dinghies. Many have died at sea. The surge in people fleeing violence and poverty in Africa and the Middle East has increased pressure on Greece which is struggling to overcome its worst economic crisis in decades.

Support for Merkel’s conservatives has slipped to its lowest on worries about the refugee crisis

Almost 400,000 migrants have arrived in Greece this year, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has made managing migration a top priority for his re-elected government and visited the island of Lesbos with Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann on Tuesday to inspect reception centres and discuss cooperation.

Meanwhile, in Germany support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives has slipped to its lowest since May on worries about the refugee crisis, a poll showed yesterday, while backing for an anti-immigrant party has risen sharply.

The Forsa poll put the conservative bloc on 39 per cent, one percentage point down from last week, and 2.5 points below its score at the last federal election two years ago. By contrast, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained two points in the past week, hitting seven per cent for the first time this year.

German authorities are struggling to cope with the roughly 10,000 refugees arriving every day. Forsa chief Manfred Guellner said Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) were losing most support in eastern Germany and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), was also down sharply.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.