GEVGELIJA: Thousands of rain-soaked migrants yesterday rushed past Macedonian riot police who were attempting to block them from entering Macedonia from Greece. Police fired stun grenades and dozens of people were injured in the border clashes.
By the end of the day, everyone got across, including several hundred migrants, mostly elderly and children, who had remained on the Greek side of the border.
Thousands then boarded trains and buses that took them up north to the border with Serbia from where they will attempt to enter European Union-member Hungary.
The tumult started when police allowed a small group of migrants with young children to cross the frontier, and crowds in the back squeezed the migrants toward the shielded police wall. Many women, at least one pregnant, and children fell to the ground, apparently fainting after squeezing past the cordon.
Then thousands of others, including women with babies and men carrying small children, grabbed their chance to climb over razor wire or run across a field not protected by the fence to enter Macedonia. Police stun grenades did not to stop the rush, but many fleeing migrants were chased down by policemen and severely kicked or beaten with batons. The elderly, women and children were not spared.
At least 25 injured people were brought to a railway station in the Macedonian town of Gevgelija by fellow migrants. Many children lost contact with their parents in the chaos and desperately called out for “mama, baba!”
It was the second day of clashes between the migrants and baton-wielding police who are attempting to block them from heading toward the European Union.
Both Greece and Macedonia have seen an unprecedented wave of migrants this year, most fleeing wars in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. More than 160,000 have arrived so far in Greece. Some 45,000 crossed through Macedonia over the past two months.
Meanwhile, the Italian navy rescued 3,000 migrants aboard more than a dozen boats in the Mediterranean yesterday after receiving requests for help from 22 vessels, the coast guard said. Operations are continuing, a spokesman said.
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