Some 300 wounded refugees have reportedly been treated in the field clinic of a medical charity group near the Idomeni crossing.
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Migrants and refugees stranded at a Greek camp on the closed border stormed a fence on Sunday and were repulsed by Macedonian police.
More than 10,000 migrants and #refugees have been stranded at the Greek border outpost of Idomeni since February after a cascade of border shutdowns across the Balkans closed off their route to central and western #Europe.
A man throws back to macedonian police a tear gas shell as migrants try to break down the border fence near their makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border in Idomeni, on April 13, 2016.
Greece has strongly condemned as a unsafe and deplorable act Macedonian police attack on refugees which left hundreds of people injured.
Tensions were still running high after Sunday’s violence, which saw 250 migrants and refugees hurt at the flashpoint Idomeni crossing as they tried to force their way into Macedonia. There is growing frustration among the refugees that they can not continue their journey.At the weekend there were rumors that the border may open so many people packed their bags and headed to the frontier. By Sunday morning, there were more than 11,200 people at Idomeni. People outside were shouting and many of them were carrying rubber bullets in their hands.
One migrant said he’d been at the camp for 44 days and was attempting to board a bus because he didn’t think they’d be opening the border.
Greek police on Tuesday detained for questioning over a dozen volunteers before releasing a lot of them without charge.
Before the shutdown, which was triggered by a similar move in Austria, further north on the migration corridor, about 850,000 people who had arrived in Greece on smugglers’ boats from Turkey had entered Macedonia from Idomeni.
President Prokopis Pavlopoulos also weighed in to the row, saying countries which display such “unacceptable and incomprehensible behaviour” have “no place in the European Union or Nato”, without naming Macedonia directly.
Sunday’s incident came a day after four women and a child drowned off the Greek island of Samos, in the first deaths in the Aegean Sea since the controversial EU-Turkey deal to stem the flow of refugees took effect three weeks ago.
Athens, Skopje and the EU Commission have repeatedly called on the refugees to move into organized accommodation centers. Others walked up to the border and waved olive branches at Macedonian soldiers who stood guard on the other side of the razor wire fence.
“I am referring to (Macedonia) specifically”.
“A five-member migrant delegation approached Macedonian police to ask whether the border was about to open”.
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The Greek government said it had lodged two “very strong protests” with Macedonian authorities.
