Macedonia Issues State of Emergency After Refugee Surge

Macedonian police have fired tear gas at migrants and refugees trying to enter from Greece after a night spent stranded in no-man’s land by an emergency decree effectively sealing the Macedonian frontier.At least four bloodied refugees were taken for treatment on the Greek side of the border, Reuters reported on Friday.
Several thousand people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, many of them Syrian refugees, spent a cold night in no-man’s land after Macedonia on Thursday declared a state of emergency and effectively blocked its southern frontier to migrants and refugees.
The flow into Macedonia had reached 1,500-2,000 per day in recent weeks, up from some 200 daily in May, leading to desperate scenes of crowds wrestling to board packed trains at a nearby railway station, children squeezed through open carriage windows.
“We cannot hermetically close the borders,” Interior Ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski told Reuters. But “we will try to reduce illegal border entry to a minimum.”
The measure could create a huge backlog of refugees on the Greek side of the border, from where some 2,000 a day have been illegally crossing into Macedonia.
“We can’t believe that we are here from this morning,” said Ahmet Husa of Syria. “People from Syria escaped from war, escaped death and we want to see our future in Europe. We need this road to see our future.”
Thousands of refugees were stranded in a no man’s land near the Macedonian town of Gevgelija, from where they planned to catch trains that would take them to the Serbian border on their way to Hungary.
Hungary has begun erecting a fence to try to keep the distraught refugee out.
Macedonia appealed on Wednesday for neighbouring countries to send train carriages to address the demand.