Up to 10,000 migrants and refugees were stuck on Greece’s border with Macedonia on Tuesday, waiting to be allowed to continue their journey to western European countries, in which they want to seek asylum, newswires reported.
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A top European Union official prepared to visit the region Tuesday to try and ease the crisis that produced more scenes of chaos: Syrian and Iraqi refugees and others forced their way through part of a Macedonian border fence, some clutching infants or struggling to free duffel bags caught in the razor-wire.
Army trucks have been stationed at a railway line near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija in anticipation of more trouble after hundreds stormed the border – prompting police to fire tear gas as several migrants were almost trampled and one officer injured.
Well over 7,000 – police say there could be up to 10,000 people there – mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees are stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions.
More than a million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe past year – mostly via Turkey to Greece – and another 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.
“These unilateral actions have infuriated Greece and threatened to damage the unity of the 28-nation European Union,”according to the newswire”. However, Human Rights Watch has documented past instances of excessive police violence by Macedonian officers against asylum seekers and migrants at the border with Greece, including the excessive use of tear gas and stun grenades.
Information campaigns in the migrants’ home and transit countries will also note that “many of them won’t have a realistic chance of staying here in Germany”.
Hundreds of small tents stood Tuesday in the fields around an official migrant camp on the Greek side of the border that can take no more people.
Speaking as the European commission signalled it was putting together an urgent humanitarian aid package for the country after predictions that more than 200,000 men, women and children will be marooned there by summer, the leftwing leader said Brussels had promised “support and solidarity”. He said Macedonian authorities are trying to send them back to Greece because the group crossed the border illegally.
Edwards saidthat at least 1,500 had spent the previous night in the open with food, shelter, water and sanitation in short supply.
He said: “We have been walking for three kilometres”.
“To keep building higher walls against the flight of these desperate people is an act of cruelty and a delusion”, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said.
In a sign of his frustration over Germany’s “open door” refugee policy, Faymann said Berlin: “should set up a daily quota and then bring these refugees directly from Greece, Turkey or Jordan”.
Ms Merkel said after meeting Croatia’s prime minister that preparations have been made in recent months to deal with the hundreds of people arriving daily in Greece.
On the Greek side, another group of 150 people who have been told it’s their turn to enter Macedonia have spent days in a large, flimsy tent in front of the crossing.
With Austria and Balkan states capping the numbers of migrants entering their soil, there has been a swift build-up along the Greece-Macedonia border with Athens warning that the number of people “trapped” could reach up to 70,000 in March.
The show’s viewership of 34.4 million was an eight-year low, and a decrease of almost 8 percent from the year before, but black viewership was down only by 2.2 percent.
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More than 111,000 migrants have already arrived in Greece this year, far ahead of the pace last year.
