Greece has blocked any new asylum applications for the next month after Turkey “opened the doors for migrants to travel to the EU. Greek officials said they had stopped nearly 10 000 migrants crossing the land border with Turkey.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece had increased “the level of deterrence at our borders to the maximum”. Turkey says it cannot deal with the amount of people fleeing Syria’s war.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was allowing migrants to try to get into neighboring EU member states Greece and Bulgaria as of Friday. His decision came after at least 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in air strikes in Idlib province in northern Syria this week.