Huge number of refugees from the war-torn Middle East continue to arrive in Greece, crossing the dangerous sea channel between Turkey and Greece in inflatable boats. The refugee influx has forced Greece to step up efforts to ease pressure on its eastern islands which lack enough infrastructure to cope with the crisis.
It's another passenger ferry packed with refugees.
Nearly 2,500 refugees on board the passenger ferry "Eleftherios Venizelos" arrived at Greece's mainland on Thursday. From Athens, they can continue their journey towards central and northern Europe.
The ship is one of three ships Greece is using to transfer migrants from its eastern Aegean islands, including Lesbos, Kos and Chios.
Seventeen year-old Muhammad from Afghanistan said his family paid two thousand US dollars for the month-long journey that landed him from Kabul to Lesbos.
"They must care about us and they have to take us to some place to be, for us to be safe, for our future and ... that's all because we are here to be safe, there's nothing for us just..." Afghan refugee Muhammad said.
The refugees are primarily Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis fleeing war, repression and poverty.
More than four million Syrians alone have fled their country because of the fighting.
"We have the most dangerous organisations all over the world, the extreme organizations: Daesh or Islamic State. Yes, exactly. In Raqqa the situation, crisis, many crises in Raqqa, the situation is very, very bad," A Syrian refugee said.
According to the International Organization for Migration, a record number of over 430-thousand refugees and migrants have reached Europe via the Mediterranean this year. That's more than double of the number of arrivals in 2014. And of those, over 300-thousand came via Greece.
The United Nations refugee agency has warned that the current flow of up to 8,000 migrants each day into Europe may only be the "tip of the iceberg". The agency has urged governments to work together to bring an end to the Syrian civil war to prevent bigger movements of people.
