Scores of residents of a village near Athens staged a highway protest on Sunday against a camp housing hundreds of asylum-seekers in the area. Riot police fired tear gas at the protesters when they blocked the road near the town of Malakasa, some 38 kilometres (24 miles) north of the capital. At least a handful of injuries were reported among police and the crowd. "It was a peaceful protest and we got beaten up," local mayor Yiorgos Giassimakis told Ethnos weekly. A police source told the ANA state news agency that six officers were hurt. The Malakasa camp was rapidly expanded in March to house hundreds of newly-arrived asylum-seekers in a surge encouraged by neighbouring Turkey. In April, the camp was placed under lockdown after an Afghan resident tested positive for COVID-19. But the mayor says many camp residents roam freely despite camp lockdown rules. "Last weekend they went up the mountain and lit fires, we had to run to put them out," he said. There are around 120,000 asylum-seekers in Greece according to the UN refugee agency, including over 32,000 in overcrowded, unhygienic camps on islands. Local communities on the islands have been pressuring the government for months to relocate asylum-seekers to the Greek mainland, where there is also opposition to their presence. jph/har