About a hundred of migrants, who have been blocked at the Macedonian-Greek border for seven days, pulled down the border fence and tried to forcibly enter the territory of Macedonia, Macedonian Vecer daily writes.
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Monitoring groups say the numbers of migrants taking the risky sea route to Greece are falling and there have also been no boats landing in Italy for a week.
Declaring “the situation is untenable”, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced tighter border controls and asylum rules in a bid to reduce the number of arrivals and force other European Union states to take in more refugees.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Tuesday warned of new humanitarian problems at crossings from Greece into the Balkans resulting from the profiling of people based on their alleged nationalities, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here. The new border policies, which prohibit the movement of migrants who are not from Syria, Afghanistan, or Iraq across Balkan borders, have incensed refugees and asylum seekers from Morocco, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, among other countries, who found themselves trapped between nations.
Migrants carry an Iranian hunger striker who feinted to the medical center of the refugee camp at the Greek-Macedonian border, near the northern Greek village of Idomeni, Thursday, Nov. 26, 2015.
Hantak says police authorities in the Czech Republic, Belgium, Britain and Germany have been cooperating on the case, which was coordinated by Europol.
“There has been no landing in Italy since the 19th of November”. He cited Turkish Coast Guard exercises as another possible reason for the sharp drop in migrants leaving the country for Greece.
Nearby, about 200 to 300 Algerians and Moroccans faced Macedonian border guards, chanting: “Mrs Merkel, please help us!”
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According to the recent figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), over 858,800 refugees have reached Europe’s shores so far this year while a total of 3,548 people have either died or gone missing in their perilous journey to the continent.
