Macedonian Police

Greece on April 11 lashed out at Macedonia for using "excessive force" after police fired tear gas and rubber bullets on migrants trying to breach the closed border to enter the EU.
 

Macedonian police clashed with migrants who attempted to illegally enter into Macedonia from Greece on Sunday.

The clash occurred at the Idomeni refugee camp at the Greek-Macedonian border where thousands of migrants have been stranded for weeks after the closure of the Western Balkan route.

Macedonian police used tear gas to push back hundreds of migrants from a border fence at a sprawling refugee camp on the Greek side of the frontier on April 10, a Reuters witness said. 

Macedonian police and army have been setting up a barbed wire fence in the last two days around a camp in Tabanovce.

Around 1,300 migrants are stranded there.

Macedonian police are "taking steps" to send hundreds of migrants who on Monday illegally entered the country back to Greece, a police spokesperson has said.

Reuters is reporting that the Interior Ministry said between 600 and 700 refugees had been detained, while Anatolia said that the number was 3,000.

Tensions rose on Monday as refugees and migrants who had been stranded for weeks at a camp inside Greece walked along the borderline and managed to cross over into the southern Macedonian village of Moin, where police and troops had been deployed in an attempt to stop them, media reported.

A court in Skopje extended the detention of former Kosovo guerrilla Gafurr Dugolli, who was arrested by Macedonian police over Serbian allegations that he committed war crimes.

The European Commission has proposed a new emergency assistance instrument worth an estimated EUR 700 M over three years to provide a faster, more targeted response to major crises inside the EU such as a sudden influx of refugees.

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.

Hundreds of refugees on Feb. 29 tried to break through a border fence into Macedonia from Greece, where more than 7,000 people are stranded, as anger mounts over barriers to entry imposed on migrants flooding into Europe.