Macedonian riot police used tear gas and stun grenades to push thousands of refugees and migrants back into Greece yesterday, less than 24 hours after the Balkan state announced that it was declaring a state of emergency on its borders and deploying the army.
About 3,000 people had tried to force their way across the border after spending the night trapped in the barren stretch of no man’s land between the two countries.
At least eight people were injured during the clashes, several of them by shrapnel from stun grenades that were fired directly into the crowd.
More than 39,000 refugees and migrants — mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — have crossed through the tiny Balkan country in the past month, straining public services and inflaming an already fraught relationship with Greece.
The short strip of frontier between the two countries has become one of the key transit points on the “Balkan route”, the journey from Greece to northern Europe that takes refugees through Macedonia and Serbia.
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In late June, the two countries, which are not EU members, announced that they would issue papers to people who had crossed their borders illegally, giving them three days to travel through and leave again.
At the northern end of the Balkan stretch, Hungary is building a wall along its entire border with Serbia to keep the migrants out.
The decision to close the Macedonian border came as a cruise ship carrying 2,500 Syrian refugees from the Greek islands of Kos and Lesbos docked in Athens. The ship had been due to take them to Thessaloniki, close to the border, but it changed course after the announcement was made.
However, with thousands more people arriving on the Greek islands each day determined to make their way through Macedonia, the crisis at the frontier is likely to worsen.