The Latest: Iraqi Christian refugees arrive in Prague

ORESTIADA, Greece (AP) — The latest developments in Europe's immigration crisis (all times local):

5:00 p.m.

The first of a total of 153 Iraqi Christians who have been offered asylum in the Czech Republic have arrived in Prague.

The government approved the group's request for help because they were threatened by the aggression of Islamic State extremists. They originally used to live near Mosul in Iraq.

Ten of them landed at Prague's international airport on Sunday and were to be taken to a hotel near the central city of Jihlava, where they will spend a couple of months.

The government will share the expenses for their move to the Czech Republic with NGOs, and religious institutions will help them settle in the country.

They will be allowed to stay after the current conflict is over.

The Czechs oppose an EU mandatory plan to redistribute 120,000 asylum-seekers among the bloc's 28 nations but say they want to help on a voluntary basis.

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3:25 p.m.

A protest in northern Greece calling on the government to grant safe passage to refugees across the land border to Turkey has ended.

The rally was attended by about 700 people and stopped about 200 meters from the Turkish border.

Human rights groups and local activists say the fence and police patrols along Greece's 200-kilometer border are forcing asylum-seekers from Syria and other conflict areas to pay hefty sums to smugglers and risk their lives to reach Europe by sea.

Police allowed a small delegation of protesters to walk to a border point Sunday and hang up a protest banner.

At end of rally, lead organizer Petros Constantinou said: "We will never accept this policy being dictated by Europe's politicians ... who close borders to refugees and force them to risk their lives."

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2:50 p.m.

Police in northern Greece have blocked protesters from reaching a border post on the Greek-Turkish frontier.

Riot police set up the blockade in the border village of Kastanies, where several hundred activists burned a European Union flag and chanted "open the borders."

The demonstrators from Athens and elsewhere in Greece are rallying for a second day in the border region, in the wake of more migrant deaths in the eastern Aegean Sea.

They are demanding that Greece ease transit restrictions at the border, where access is blocked by a 10.5-kilometer (6 1/2-mile) fence.

Protest organizer Petros Constantinou said: "We have every right to go to the border post and demonstrate. We have given authorities ample notification."

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2:00 p.m.

Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner says the country's newly introduced cap on the number of refugees allowed into the country will likely be reached in a few months.

Mikl-Leitner has told German weekly Welt am Sonntag that the maximum number of 37,500 refugees would probably be reached before the summer.

The Austrian minister said Sunday that once the cap had been reached the country would either refuse to accept further asylum application or reject refugees on the border.

More than 1 million people from countries like Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan entered Europe last year in the biggest migration to the continent since World War II. They mostly went to Germany and other wealthy EU nations.

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1:50 p.m.

Demonstrators have gathered for a second day near Greece's border with Turkey, calling on the government to grant safe passage to refugees at the frontier.

Several hundred protesters traveled to the border town of Orestiada, near a 10.5-kilometer (6 1/2-mile) border fence.

Human rights groups and local activists say the fence and police patrols along Greece's 200-kilometer border are forcing asylum-seekers from Syria and other conflict areas, to pay hefty sums to smugglers and risk their lives to reach Europe by sea.

Two migrant boats sunk in the eastern Aegean Sea earlier this week, killing at least 46 people, including more than a dozen children.

The protesters chanting "Pull down the fence. Open the borders," are planning to travel in a bus convoy to the edge of a military area that includes the border fence, and onto a nearby border crossing point.