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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/6/2016 1:51:18 PM

New charges for Georgia man awaiting trial in hot-car child death

Reuters


Justin Ross Harris, 33, looks on at the Cobb County Magistrate Court in Marietta, Georgia July 3, 2014. REUTERS/Kelly Huff

(Reuters) - A Georgia man who faces trial on charges of intentionally leaving his toddler inside a hot car and exchanging nude photos with females as the child was dying, is facing eight new charges of child exploitation.

Justin Ross Harris was indicted Friday on two counts of sexual exploitation and six counts of dissemination of harmful materials for possessing photographs of underage girls performing sexual acts, according to a seven-page indictment from the Cobb County District Attorney's office.

The indictment alleges Harris, 35, shared naked images of himself and printed descriptions of sexual conduct and excitement with three different girls from Jan. 23, 2014 to March 8, 2014.

On Saturday, a spokeswoman from the Cobb County District Attorney's Office said the new charges stem from further analysis of electronic devices in the original case.

Harris, who is in jail awaiting trial, is expected to be arraigned on the new charges, but no court date has been set, the spokeswoman said.

A lawyer for Harris did not immediately respond a request for comment.

Harris' trial is set to begin in April on his 2014 indictment on eight charges of malice and felony murder, as well as child cruelty and a charge related to sexual exploitation for asking a girl to send him lewd photos.

At the time, the indictment said the suburban Atlanta father acted "with malice aforethought" when he placed his 22-month-old son in a car seat and left him in a sport utility vehicle on a day when temperatures exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).

Prosecutors have argued that Harris deliberately left his son in the car because he wanted to live a child-free life.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has reported that Ross pleaded not guilty to the first set of charges.

(Reporting by Justin Madden in Chicago; Editing by Alan Crosby)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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3/6/2016 2:08:26 PM

THOUSANDS ARE FLEEING SOUTH SUDAN’S NEW REBELLION

BY ON 3/5/16 AT 3:42 PM

Refugee shelters in Bitima village. Hundreds of refugees from South Sudan have found shelter in this small Congolese village near the border. Families, mostly women and children, have fled the conflict that erupted around Yambio and other areas of Western Equatoria. They have no place to go, and no money to go further. UNHCR/COLIN DELFOSSE

One evening while he was still celebrating the birth of his first son a week earlier, Philip Bati answered a knock on the door at home in the South Sudanese city of Yambio.

Expecting well-wishers, Bati instead found men with guns on his doorstep demanding money. It had been an expensive week since his son’s birth, and Bati, 35, was broke. He had no chance but to plead for his life.

“He was shot right at the door, since he had nothing to give them,” says his wife, Faustina Joseph, who was next door at the time, showing off the baby to the neighbors. “They pushed his body inside, blocked the door and set fire to the house, burning him with it.”

Yambio is far from South Sudan’s swamps and savannas to the north and east, which have been ravaged in the country’s two-year rebellion. That fighting, between its government and forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar, has killed at least 10,000 people and driven 2.3 million from their homes, stoking catastrophic hunger, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.



Faustina Joseph with her 5-month-old baby, who was born in South Sudan. The baby is sick, and she has no money to go to the hospital. Her husband, Philip Bati, died in an attack.
UNHCR/COLIN DELFOSSE


Lawlessness has been sweeping the world's newest nation—South Sudan won independence just four years ago—and the relative peace in the country's Western Equatoria state has now been shattered. Separate from the country's “main” civil war, this new rebellion pits an anti-government militia against the national army. Civilians, as so often, are the victims.

Until recently, the south of the country was peaceful. But those fleeing say violence has now spread there too. After her husband’s death, Faustina, 35, grabbed her children and fled south to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they now live in a makeshift refugee encampment in a village called Bitima, close to the South Sudan border.

The refugees—perhaps 300 of them—are huddled in a clutch of palm-frond shelters down by the overgrown soccer field. The smoke of cooking fires smoldering beneath near-empty pots hangs in the air, making children cough.

Mboringba, Faustina’s once-healthy son, is in a bed at the rudimentary clinic with acute malnutrition. Her daughter has malaria. The family is among tens of thousands of victims of a surge in killings, rapes, child abductions and lootings that is driving a new Central African refugee crisis, barely noticed internationally despite the fact that it has spilled across the borders of four countries.

At night, rebels steal out from their rural strongholds into state-controlled towns, raping women and girls, looting property and kidnapping children. Those who resist, like Bati did, are killed. During the day, the army retaliates, targeting real or imagined rebel supporters.

"They pushed his body inside, blocked the door and set fire to the house, burning him with it."

The fighting in Yambio began in May 2015 and spiked again in August, around Christmas and the New Year, and most recently again in the middle of February.

A two-hour drive through dense rain forest south of Bitima is Dungu, the largest town in northeastern Congo. Hundreds more South Sudanese refugees have arrived there. James Wamwite, a mechanic from Yambio, came on February 14. It had been three days since the latest fighting left his great-grandmother dead—her throat slit—as well as his house burnt to the ground and his business looted.

Wamwite slipped across the border riding a motorbike with his four young children clinging on behind him, forced to leave his terrified wife and their newborn baby in the care of relatives.

“You may not believe me, but if you move around parts of Yambio today, what you will find everywhere is the smell of dead bodies, the graves of people who have been burnt, houses turned to ashes,” says James, 33, the strain of sleepless nights etched on his face.

“One of the things happening that is hard to describe is they come and knock at your door, then they come in and tie you down and rape your wife or your young girls in your presence. The hard thing to know is, who is doing this?” he asks. “There are so many people with guns, who is the rebel and who is the soldier? That one we don’t know.”

Eunice Romai, 29, fled the fighting three days after giving birth, on Christmas Eve, to a daughter she named Chance. Despite still needing medical care, she and her family walked for three days to reach safety, sleeping under trees, without food or medicine, unable even to wash. In the bed next to hers at the hospital where Chance was born was another expectant mother, seven months pregnant.

“She had been raped, by seven men with guns,” Eunice says, her voice tight with quiet fury. “I heard they also raped nuns at the Catholic church. This is something really serious. I was born and grew up in South Sudan when it was at war, and I never saw things like this. I never heard guns like we were hearing every night there.”


Eunice Romai and her baby Chance. She fled from Yambio village in South Sudan with her husband, Ali Baba, and their six kids. After seeing attacks and rapes in her neighborhood, she decided to flee despite the fact that she had just given birth.
UNHCR/COLIN DELFOSSE


"I was born and grew up in South Sudan when it was at war, and I never saw things like this."

The help these people now need to survive in Congo—itself ravaged by years of wars, militia rebellions and a careless government—is slowly increasing, but aid resources are stretched thin among other crises.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Congolese authorities expected to individually register more than 4,000 South Sudanese refugees during visits to the remote areas of northern Congo in late February and early March. UNHCR has already distributed essential items like pots, soap and water cans, while the World Food Program has given food, and additional aid is coming.

Similar efforts are under way in other parts of Africa where those displaced by this crisis have fled—in South Sudan itself, and in the Central African Republic and Uganda.

Emmanuel, 13, builds his own shelter with palm trees in Bitima. UNHCR/COLIN DELFOSSE


A great deal more is needed, says Josselyn Midadje, a UNHCR protection officer who is leading the registration operation in Congo. “What is important to do to save human lives now is for the international community to turn their eyes to this crisis and give it the same attention as the Libyan crisis, or the crisis in Syria that we talk about so much,” she says.

“This South Sudan crisis is one nobody talks about. These are really harsh conditions for these people, and I think in terms of shelter, food and medicine, we need to intervene very quickly,” he says.

Children, targeted by the militia, continue to struggle even if they have reached safety. Michael Agima, a 17-year-old who was at the top of his class in science and wanted to be an engineer, saw boys in his class kidnapped to be child soldiers. Once abducted, rebel commanders forced them to call on friends, tricking them to come out and be taken hostage as well. "I’m worried because I don’t think I can finish my schooling now," he says. "But I could not stay there to be a soldier." Agima is now with an uncle and his family, living with strangers at a house in Dungu.

"This South Sudan crisis is one nobody talks about."

Victoria Miidie, 16, who is with her family in a borrowed hut in Dungu, saw her friends being taken by the rebels too. “Some were being raped, some were being forced to cook for the gunmen," she says. "If you refuse, maybe they cut off your head or shoot you dead there in the bush."

The trauma of the survivors is intense, and each is left to cope in his or her own way. Justine Underete says that one day in January when her husband was away, the front room of her home in Yambio became a front line during a gunbattle. She took her children and fled to Congo, and has not heard from him since.

(Newsweek)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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3/6/2016 2:25:22 PM

As army rebuilds, Iraqi assault to retake Mosul months away

U.S. and Iraqi officials say it will take many more months to prepare Iraq's still struggling military for a long-anticipated assault on the Islamic State group's biggest stronghold in the country, the city of Mosul


Associated Press

FILE - In this Wednesday, May 27, 2015, file photo, U.S. soldiers, left, participate in a training mission with Iraqi army soldiers outside Baghdad, Iraq. It will take many more months to prepare Iraq’s still struggling military for a long-anticipated assault on the Islamic State group’s biggest stronghold in the country, the city of Mosul, U.S. and Iraqi officials say _ and it may not even be possible to retake it this year, despite repeated vows by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)


BAGHDAD (AP) -- It will take many more months to prepare Iraq's still struggling military for a long-anticipated assault on the Islamic State group's biggest stronghold in the country, the city of Mosul, U.S. and Iraqi officials say — and it may not even be possible to retake it this year, despite repeated vows by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

As the U.S. and its allies furiously work to train thousands more troops for the daunting task of retaking Iraq's second largest city, Islamic State group fighters are launching a diversion campaign of bloody suicide attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere. Their aim is to force Iraq's already overburdened security forces to spread even thinner to protect the capital and other cities rather than prepare the Mosul operation.

Iraq's answer to that has been to plan to build a wall around the capital. Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqis are struggling to protect pockets of territory that have been recaptured from the extremists to free up forces for Mosul.

"Mosul will be very complicated, it will be a mix of forces and it will be very important to ensure it's well planned," Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama's envoy to the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group, said Saturday.

U.S. Army Col. Christopher Garver, a spokesman for the coalition, put it more bluntly. "The forces that are going to conduct that assault into the city, they're not in place yet."

The northern city of Mosul, once home to more than a million people, was the biggest prize captured by the Islamic State group when it swept over much of Iraq's north and west in the summer of 2014 and declared a "caliphate" across those lands and the ones it captured in Syria. While Iraqi forces have clawed back some territory in the past year, retaking Mosul is considered crucial for breaking the jihadis' back in the country. Estimates of the number of IS fighters in Mosul vary from a few thousand to "not more than 10,000," according to the coalition.

The Iraqi military is still struggling to regroup. When Mosul fell to IS, more than a third of the military disintegrated as thousands of soldiers shed their uniforms and dropped their weapons to flee. In the following months, tens of thousands more Iraqi troops were identified as "ghost soldiers" — nonexistent troops whose pay was pocketed by senior commanders.

The U.S.-led coalition began a training program months later in December 2014, but so far only 18,500 soldiers and security forces have been trained in courses which last around seven weeks. Experts question whether such a crash course is adequate preparation. Coalition and Iraqi officials estimate eight to 12 brigades, or an estimated 24,000 to 36,000 troops, will be needed for the operation to capture Mosul.

So far, 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi troops have been deployed at Makhmour base, the likely staging ground for a Mosul assault, located 40 miles (67 kilometers) southeast of the city.

"We are all trained, qualified and ready for battle. But this force is not enough to retake Mosul," said Iraqi Lt. Col Mohammed al-Wagaa, stationed at Makhmour. "The battle for Mosul is going to take a long time."

Under political pressure to show victory, al-Abadi has repeatedly vowed to "liberate" Mosul this year. But U.S. Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress last month, "I'm not as optimistic."

Stewart said they may be able to begin "isolation operations" around the city, but "securing or taking Mosul is an extensive operation and not something I see in the next year or so."

The Iraqi military's few competent, battle-tested units are scattered, helping hold various front lines against IS in the country's central and western provinces or tied down controlling cities and towns retaken from the militants since other security forces aren't capable.

Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces have units near Tikrit and Baiji in central Iraq and Habaniya in the west. In Ramadi, capital of western Anbar province, a counterterrorism commander said his unit has to remain there because local police forces can't maintain control. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he's not authorized to talk to the press.

"You can't just pick up and leave," Garver said. Without proper forces in place, "Daesh comes back in and seizes terrain that you just spent months taking from them," he said, using an alternative Arabic acronym for IS.

IS has stepped up insurgent-style attacks on Baghdad and other towns removed from front-line fighting. Over the past week a double bombing at a market in Baghdad's Sadr city killed more than 70. The following day a suicide attack at a funeral north of Baghdad killed over 30.

The attacks likely aim at delaying deployment of troops to Makhmour or along the Euphrates River valley for the Mosul assault by forcing the military to move its best forces to protect the capital, said Patrick Martin, an Iraq analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

So far the attacks haven't slowed deployments north. But "if it becomes really bad and multiple attacks like these happen in the near future, (the military's) calculus will probably have to shift," Martin said.

Last month security officials announced work had begun on a 280 kilometer (175 mile) "wall" around Baghdad that would reduce militant attacks inside the city. The Interior Ministry said it would be a combination of tightened checkpoints, trenches and blast walls completely surrounding the Iraqi capital.

The military must also clear IS fighters from more than 100 kilometers (70 miles) of territory to ensure reliable supply lines between Makhmour and Baghdad, said a Baghdad-based military commander overseeing preparations for the Mosul offensive. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to brief the press.

Politics have also complicated planning efforts, as Shiite militias demand that they participate. "No one has the right to prevent us from participating in the liberation of the city of Mosul," Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, the head of the government-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces, mostly made up of Shiite militias, said at a Thursday press conference.

Shiite militia fighters — some of the most effective ground forces against IS — led the fight to retake the mainly Sunni city of Tikrit and were accused of human rights violations in the process. The U.S.-led coalition has repeatedly refused to launch airstrikes in support of Shiite militia operations. In last summer's Anbar offensive, the PMF stood aside and heavy coalition airstrikes proved decisive in Iraqi military gains there.

"We will rely on ourselves in the fighting," Maj. Gen. Bahaa al-Azzawi, chief of police in Mosul's Nineveh province, told the AP, "but if we get support from the coalition this will reduce how long it will take to liberate (Mosul), it will speed up the process and reduce our losses."

___

Associated Press writer Salar Salim in Irbil, Iraq contributed to this report.

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/6/2016 2:40:22 PM



PROGRESS

03.06.16 12:01 AM ET

The World’s First Transgender Mosque
Indonesia is more progressive when it comes to gender fluidity than the West, but that tolerance has come under attack by Islamists.

On Sundays, Shinta Ratri would sit in the back of the mosque, in her hijab and a full-body prayer garment, preparing to pray among her transgender sisters. Most of them would line up ahead of her, their heads bare and their bodies clad in men’s shirts and pants.

The Pondok Pesantren Waria was likely the first transgender prayer school in the world. The school’s name is a combination of pondok pesantran, Indonesian for prayer school, and waria, Indonesian for transgender woman. Shinta and another transgender woman (waria in Indonesian), fostered a community of to 30 to 40 active members, from a community of several hundred transgender women in the city. Then in February, it wasshuttered by authorities responding to threats from the Islamic Jihad Front.

Shinta, 54, was also the mosque’s landlady, even letting some other waria live at her home, though her co-founder passed away a few years ago. They’d created the space in 2008 to provide the community with a gathering space and help in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Yogyakarta two years prior.

Shinta Ratri, a leader of a Pesantren boarding school, Al-Fatah, for transgender people known as 'waria' prays during Ramadan on July 08, 2015 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. During the holy month of Ramadan the 'waria' community gather to break the fast and pray together. 'Waria' is a term derived from the words 'wanita' (woman) and 'pria' (man). The Koran school Al-Fatah was set back last year's by Shinta Ratri at her house as a place for waria to pray, after their first founder Maryani died. The school operates every Sunday. Islam strictly segregates men from women when praying, leaving no-where for 'the third sex' waria to pray before now. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

Ulet Ifansasti/Getty

Shinta Ratri, a leader of a Pesantren boarding school, Al-Fatah, for transgender people known as 'waria' prays during Ramadan on July 08, 2015 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Shinta has been married to men, twice, and currently lives with her ex-husband and his new wife—a cisgender woman. She’s also raising an adopted daughter—a fact that might explain why she, unlike so many of the other waria, prays in her hijab as a woman. She is not only a waria: Shinta is a mother.

“I am a waria; I am not gay, and I am not straight,” Shinta told David Brian Esch, who spent three months observing the prayer school while he was a graduate student in religion. “I feel I am a woman, but physically I am a man.”

While transgender issues and identities are just now gaining widespread acceptance in the United States, they’ve been on the forefront of Indonesian national consciousness longer because the waria are more visible than gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.

The waria a term for transfeminine people drawn from the Indonesian words for woman (wanita) and man (pria), see themselves as far from gay.

“They would look at me—I’m a gay man—and they would say, ‘You’re a woman,’” Esch said. “Their sexuality is what gives them gender.”

Over conversations with 19 waria, Esch said the continuously got answers about sexuality to questions about gender.

“I would ask, are you gay or heterosexual, and they would say, no, I’m waria, I’m a woman,” he said. “What they’re most adamant about is that they’re not gay.”

Yet the waria nonetheless face rampant discrimination in housing, employment, and society at large, and the prayer school was a social and religious safe haven.

“One fascinating aspect of the pesantren is that it went along without any harassment from hardline groups for years and we all wondered why extremist groups were shutting down churches and ‘gayish’ nightclubs and leaving the pesantren alone,” Esch said. Perhaps Shinta’s integration in the general community of Yogyakarta, and the city’s large student base, may have given them more leeway.

“Yogyakarta is a city where all Islamic groups, both moderate and Islamist-leaning, have a high representation,” Alexander Arifianto, a researcher at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told The Daily Beast, adding that the groups recruit from the city’s universities. “The attack against the LGBT boarding school is just the latest of these incidents within the city. Last year there were several attacks against a number of Christian churches within the city.”


Watch video

Transgender people have been acknowledged throughout Islamic history, and the Prophet Muhammad’s wife is even said to have had a mukhannath (effeminate) servant who was only banished from the women’s quarters when the Prophet realized he was attracted to women.

Even today in Iran, the Islamic government will pay for gender confirmation surgery for transgender people, making the country second only to Thailand in the number of such surgeries performed. (Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, and activists worry that some gay people may be forced into such surgeries to escape that grisly end.)

The waria at the prayer school, however, are increasingly familiar with Western terms like gender identity and expression: Volunteers frequent the mosque and the local Planned Parenthood gives them workshops on those concepts. Now, the waria translatewaria to transgender, but gender and sexuality are still culturally inextricably linked.


Indonesia, an archipelago nation home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has no laws against sodomy and is one of the friendliest Muslim-majority countries for LGBT people. But the country also has a growing Islamist presence that is attacking the big city safe havens for queer folks. Last month, for instance, the country banned LGBT emojis.

Just before the pesantren was forced to close, the Indonesian psychiatric association declared being transgender “may cause suffering and obstacles in functioning as a human being.”

But at the makeshift mosque, they had a safe haven and a clear understanding of their identities. Their religious leader told Esch that he wanted Islam to “adapt to the era and take into account gender, human rights, and a transgender perspective.”

This hope for an expansion of acceptable practices and opinions is the very thing conservative salafist preachers in the city find threatening.

“God created his creatures and I want to live as I am,” Oki, one of the waria at the pesantran, told Esch on camera. “It is my fate.”

“Sometimes I feel sad because I want to pray at the mosque but people look and talk about me,” she added. “Other have told me that being waria is a sin. I told them that we do not know God’s gender. We do not know if God is a man or a woman or waria.”

Another waria, Tamara, asserted an almost-holy status for her gender when confronted with naysayers.

“I just asked, so, what gender your God? Your God is women or guys? And they answer, God not women and God not man,” she told Esch in English. “And I’m stand up and told them, I’m your God!”

And the pesantren allowed the women to pray as they want, although most chose to pray as men. They see themselves as male, not as men, Esch explained.

“I pray as a man because I want to face my god as a man. And I learned as a child to pray as a man, with the male dress, the sarong, and when I die I want to be buried as a man, even though I am waria,” Oki said. “I will be asked by God what my original family name is.”

Because this belief is prevalent, many waria say they don’t want gender confirmation surgery, though it would be financially unfeasible for most in any case.

The body modifications that do take place come from taking female hormones (usually birth control pills), and injecting liquid silicone into their faces to give them a more feminine look. It travels under their skin and settles on the ends of their noses and on their cheekbones, giving some of the waria a distinctive, mask-like appearance. Some resort to under-the-table surgeries to remove it.

While the pesantren waria attracted researchers and reporters from around the world by combining the seemingly incongruous categories of transgender and Muslim, that combination may have been the least interesting thing the waria observed about themselves. They would rather talk about the discrimination they encounter in housing and employment.

“What you’re asking us is not very important to us,” they told Esch.

(The Daily Beast)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/6/2016 5:16:00 PM

18 migrants drown off Turkey, few allowed into Macedonia

At least 18 people have drowned off the Turkish coast while trying to reach Greece, while Macedonian authorities are imposing further restrictions on refugees trying to cross the Greek border


Associated Press

A migrant family rests near the border that separates the Greek side from the Macedonian one to be allowed to cross into Macedonia, at the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Sunday, March 6, 2016. A regional governor called on the Greek government Saturday to declare a state of emergency for the area surrounding the Idomeni border crossing where thousands of migrants are stranded due to border restrictions along the route toward western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)


IDOMENI, Greece (AP) -- At least 18 people drowned off the Turkish coast while trying to reach Greece Sunday, while Macedonian authorities imposed further restrictions on refugees trying to cross the Greek border.

The Turkish coast guard launched a search-and-rescue mission for other migrants believed to be missing from the accident, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. The coast guard rescued 15 other migrants off the Aegean Sea resort of Didim, it added.

The dead included three children, according to private Dogan news agency.

Meanwhile, Greek police officials said Macedonian authorities are only allowing those from cities they consider to be at war to cross the Idomeni border crossing from Greece. That means people from cities such as Aleppo in Syria, for example, can enter, but those from the Syrian capital of Damascus or the Iraqi capital of Baghdad are being stopped.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak on the record.

The developments come a day ahead of a summit between the European Union and Turkey to discuss the crisis.

Nearly all refugees and other migrants who enter the EU have been doing so by taking small inflatable dinghies from the Turkish coast to the nearby Greek islands. With thousands of kilometers of coastline, Greece says it cannot staunch the flow unless Turkey stops the boats from leaving its shores.

Athens has also criticized Europe for not sticking to agreements to take in refugees in a relocation scheme that never really got off the ground.

"While Idomeni is closed for refugees and the flows from the islands, from the Turkish shores to the islands, remain, it must be perfectly clear that the immediate start of a reliable process of relocation of refugees from our country to other countries of the European Union is a matter of complete urgency," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Sunday during a speech to his party.

"And this is exactly what we will seek in the summit on Monday. Not just the wording that this is urgent, but that it will begin immediately and with a large number," Tsipras said.

While thousands arrive in Greece's main port of Piraeus from the islands, about 13,000-14,000 people remain stranded in Idomeni, with more arriving each day. The refugee camp has overflowed, with thousands pitching tents among the railway tracks and in adjacent fields.

The rate at which refugees are being allowed to cross had already been reduced to a trickle, with sometimes only a few dozen, or even nobody, being allowed to cross. Greek police said 240 people crossed between 6 a.m. Saturday and the same time Sunday morning.

The camp is beginning to take on a form of semi-permanence, with people realizing they will be spending at the very least several days in the fields. As morning broke, women swept the earth outside their tents with makeshift brooms made of twigs and leaves. Men stomped on branches pulled off trees nearby to use as firewood for small campfires to boil tea and cook.

Throughout Sunday morning, dozens of local Greeks arrived in cars packed with clothes and food donations to distribute to the refugees. Many were mobbed as they arrived at the first tents, with men, women and children scrambling to receive whatever handouts they could.

The sheer numbers have overwhelmed Greek authorities. Massive queues of hundreds of people form from early in the morning, with people waiting for hours for a lunch-time sandwich.

While Greek officials have tried to discourage more people from arriving, and no longer allow buses to drive to the Idomeni border, hundreds continue to arrive each day, walking more than 15 kilometers (10 miles) from a nearby gas station where the United Nations refugee agency has set up large tents.

"We have been here five days, or six. Who remembers the days anymore," said Narjes al Shalaby, 27, from Damascus in Syria, travelling with her mother and two daughters, 5-year-old Maria and 10-year-old Bara'a. Her husband and third daughter are already in Germany.

"All we do here is sleep, wake up, sleep. We get hungry, we wait in the queue for two hours for a sandwich, we come back, we sleep some more," said Narjes, who worries about her daughters.

"She's grown up sooner that she should have," she says of Maria, who is sleeping in the back of the family's small tent. "She's aged."

___

Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki contributed.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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