Greece has begun evacuating migrants from the main Idomeni camp on the Macedonia border, while the flow of refugees arriving on Aegean islands has slowed to a trickle, officials said yesterday.

Eight buses transported around 400 refugees from Idomeni to nearby refugee camps Friday, local police sources said.

A dozen more buses were waiting for migrants reluctant to leave the border, which has been shut down since earlier this month.

"People who have no hope or have no money, maybe they will go. But I have hope, maybe something better will happen tomorrow, maybe today," said 40-year-old Fatema Ahmed from Iraq, who has a 13-year-old son in Germany and three daughters with her in the camp.

Those persuaded to board the first buses were mainly parents with children who can no longer tolerate the difficult conditions.

A total of 11,603 people still remains at the sprawling border camp.

Giorgos Kyritsis, spokesman of the SOMP agency, which is coordinating Athens' response to the refugee crisis, said the operation to evacuate Idomeni will intensify from tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the flow of refugees arriving in Greece is slowing.

Greece on Thursday said no migrants had arrived on its Aegean islands in the previous 24 hours, for the first time since the controversial EU-Turkey deal to halt the massive influx came into force at the weekend.

On Friday, the number of new arrivals was 161, down to 78 on Saturday, according to Greek officials, while the number of migrants in Greece was 50,236.