EUROPE-MIGRANTS/MACEDONIA-TEAR GAS Macedonian police fire tear gas to drive back migrants on border

Record ID: 143086

  • Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/MACEDONIA-TEAR GAS Macedonian police fire tear gas to drive back migrants on border
  • Date: 21st August 2015
  • Summary: GEVGELIJA, MACEDONIA (AUGUST 21, 2015) (REUTERS) MIGRANTS CAMPED ON MACEDONIAN BORDER MIGRANTS/RIOT POLICE MIGRANTS SHOUTING RIOT POLICE AND MIGRANTS / OBJECTS FLYING TOWARDS RIOT POLICE / AUDIO OF SHOTS / CLOUDS OF TEAR GAS / MIGRANTS RETREATING RIOT POLICE MIGRANTS RIOT POLICE CONFRONTING MIGRANTS SOLDIERS PUTTING ON RIOT GEAR
  • Embargoed: 5th September 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA5V9397D7YGTYOALSZ5RACP5E4
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Riot police in Macedonia fired tear gas on Friday (August 21) to disperse thousands of migrants and refugees trying to enter the Balkan country from Greece, a Reuters reporter on the border said.
    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 (August 20) declared a state of emergency and effectively sealed its southern frontier to migrants and refugees.
    Riot police behind barbed wire fired tear gas to drive back an angry crowd demanding passage into Macedonia so they can travel further north into the European Union, the Reuters reporter said.
    Authorities said official border crossings remained open, but that they would "reduce illegal border entry to a minimum".
    The flow into Gevgelija, which has hit 1,500 to 2,000 a day, has suddenly stopped. The shutdown came after days of desperate scenes at the local railway station as thousands of people pressed to board trains to Serbia, young children being passed through open carriage windows.
    Macedonia acted as a Greek car ferry docked in Athens carrying 2,400 Syrian refugees from the island of Kos, just some of the 50,000 Middle Eastern, African and Asian migrants and refugees who arrived in Greece in July alone. Many will take buses north, heading for Macedonia, then Serbia and Europe's borderless Schengen zone in Hungary.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
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