ROME (AP) – The Latest on Europe’s migration crisis (all times local):
5 p.m.
Chancellor Angela Merkel says she expects asylum applications from the large number of migrants who arrived in Germany in 2015 to be processed by early next year.
Germany registered nearly 1.1 million people as asylum-seekers last year. Officials say that figure was inflated by people who registered multiple times or then continued to other countries in Scandinavia and elsewhere. Since asylum applications lag some distance behind arrivals, it isn’t clear how many actually arrived.
News agency dpa reported that Merkel said in Berlin Tuesday: “We will have an exact overview by the end of September of how many exactly arrived last year.”
She added: “In the spring of next year all asylum applications will be processed, apart from the ones where papers are missing or everything is mixed up.”
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2:25 p.m.
Greek police have arrested two local men for allegedly trying to smuggle a group of Syrian refugees trapped in Greece over the rugged border with Albania.
Police said the suspects were part of a network that had promised to clandestinely bring the refugees to northern Europe, for which each Syrian was to pay 1,200 euros (US$1,300) upon arrival.
A police statement Tuesday said the two Greeks were arrested in the mountainous Kastoria region, after letting off 14 Syrians near the border. They had allegedly driven the group there in two cars from the northern city of Thessaloniki.
It was the fifth such incident on the Albanian border since mid-July.
About 60,000 refugees and other migrants have been trapped in Greece by a series of Balkan border closures in March.
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1:50 p.m.
The mayor of Paris has presented a plan to open a new reception center for migrants in the French capital.
Mayor Anne Hidalgo said Tuesday the center in north Paris designed for up to 400 people is aimed at taking care of “several dozen migrants arriving everyday” in the city.
People will be allowed to stay there for up to 10 days before being transferred to other facilities in France where they can apply for asylum.
Hidalgo says she hopes to have the center open by mid-October and that it will prevent migrants from camping in squalid conditions elsewhere in the capital.
French authorities say about 15,000 migrants have been removed from Paris streets and parks and given shelter since June 2015.
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1:40 p.m.
Italian police say 21 people have been detained on suspicion of transporting new Syrian migrants into Germany, Austria and France in a fleet of old cars.
Police say 10 of the 18 drivers arrested in Germany and Austria were Italian, but that the main organizers of the land-based smuggling network that charged 500 euros per passenger were Syrian, Egyptian and Tunisian.
They said in a statement Tuesday that the taxi network ferried 200 migrants north from Italy and Hungary from December 2014 to May 2016.
Police say the Como, Italy-based organizers recruited the drivers and provided them with 170 different used cars, many owned by fictitious companies.
The investigation began in September 2015 when an Italian was arrested in Hungary with several migrants in his car, according to Eurojust.