Macedonia started building a fence on its border with Greece on Saturday to better control the influx of migrants passing through the Balkan country, an AFP photographer at the frontier said.
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Migrants fleeing war are still allowed access, the government says.
Some Iranians on the Greek-Macedonian border have sewn their lips shut and are refusing food.
Guy Delauney reports from Belgrade.
Tensions between migrants stranded on the Greek side of the Greek-Macedonian border and Macedonian police have subsided.
On Thursday, hundreds of migrants clashed with Macedonian riot police at as they tried to force their way through the cordon. A lot of them received minor injuries but two were hospitalized in the nearby town of Gevgelija, Macedonia’s Interior Ministry said.
A government spokesman said that the fence should “direct the inflow of people” and the border will remain open. Officials say the structure is needed to ensure migrants don’t slip across the frontier undetected, without going through official checkpoints and being registered.
Reports suggest that Macedonian police briefly entered Greece and fired stun grenades on the rioters.
The man, one of those whose entry into Macedonia has been forbidden, climbed on top of a stationary train carriage and touched a power cable overhead.
His fellow migrants then began shouting, with some chanting “God is great” in Arabic.
Officials roped in Macedonian soldiers to help erect the barrier, which is similar to others recently built by Hungary and Slovenia on their southern borders.
In a recent interview with Kathimerini and other Greek media, FYROM’s Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki said that the EU’s border monitoring agency Frontex should establish a presence at Greece’s border with FYROM.
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This story has been corrected to show the Moroccan who suffered severe burns was 24, not 32.
