Macedonia

The Serbian Foreign Ministry has said it is "not recommending" that Serbians travel via the Gevgelija/Idomeni border crossing between Macedonia and Greece.

This comes as several thousand refugees from the Middle East, stranded at this railroad crossings, on Friday clashed with Macedonian police and soldiers.

Macedonian special police forces have fired stun grenades to disperse thousands of migrants stuck on a no-man's land with Greece, a day after Macedonia declared a state of emergency on its borders to deal with a massive influx of migrants heading north to Europe.

The latest on the “migrant front” on Thursday again witnessed heightened tensions amongst congregated third country nationals on the island of Kos, while a large ferry boat unloaded another 2,500 refugees on a Piraeus dock.

The government in Skopje on Thursday declared a state of emergency along its southern and northern borders due to a rising wave of migrants.

This creates the possibility of deploying the Macedonian army, Interior Ministry spokesperson Ivo Kotevski said.

Macedonia said it was deploying troops on the border with Greece, in a last-ditch move to stem to flow of refugees into and across the country.

The aim was to enhance control of the border area, Ivo Kotevski, spokesperson of the Ministry for Interior, explained on Thursday.

Germany faced another increase in the number of asylum requests from citizens of the six Western Balkans Countries in July, despite repeated efforts by German and local authorities to halt the phenomenon.

The fence being built by Hungary along its southern border with Serbia would redirect the wave of migrants to Croatia and Bulgaria, the Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic has said.

Serbia, Macedonia, Greece and Hungary could sign a memorandum to build a gas pipeline from Turkey to Austria, a Russian business daily writes.

This pipeline, to be called Tesla, would represent an extension of Turkish Stream that Russian giant Gazprom plans to build, Vedomosti is reporting, citing sources taking part in the project.

The idea of building a wall along the Serbian-Macedonian border to prevent the migrants from entering the country is disgraceful, says Meho Omerovic.

Serbia has so far registered 83,000 migrants and 500 of them applied for asylum in the country, UNHCR representative in Serbia Hans Schodder said on Tuesday.