Macedonian Police Fire Tear Gas at Migrants

Children are covered with plastic raincoats as stranded refugees wait for the border crossing to reopen near the Greek village of Idomeni, February 28, 2016.

According to Greek media reports, more than 25,000 refugees were scattered across the country Sunday, including those at the Idomeni bottleneck and others still waiting on the islands.

Greece was taking “all the measures as if borders have closed for good by activating a Plan B to deal with the refugee emergency”, Greek Deputy Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas said on Sunday.

Greece fears that it will become a “parking lot” for refugees as its northern neighbours tightly restrict the number of people coming into their territory.

The protesters, who were chanting “Open the border” and throwing stones at Macedonian police, were repelled.

Elsewhere, clashes broke out Monday as French authorities began dismantling parts of the “Jungle”, the sprawling camp near the northwestern port of Calais that houses thousands of migrants seeking to enter the United Kingdom illegally. A police spokeswoman said a train with 450 refugees left the Greek border early Monday and was heading for Serbia.

Mouzalas said he expected the influx to slow when the information about closed borders spread in Turkey, where more than two million people fleeing the war in Syria have taken refuge.

Police say about 6,500 people are at or near the Idomeni border crossing, with another 500 moved to a hastily erected camp on a small concrete landing strip some 20 kilometers (13 miles) away.

The facilities in Idomeni are under such severe pressure that many migrants are forced to sleep in the open, wait for several hours to receive food and water and stand in long lines to use toilets. “It was very cold”.

Jojack hopes to reach Germany, where her 18-year-old son has already arrived.

As a result, the tighter controls have had a big knock-on effect in Greece, where migrants have been arriving en masse from neighbouring Turkey.

After first sending welcoming messages, European authorities are now struggling to handle the situation.

Greece raced to set up temporary accommodation for a build-up of thousands of migrants stranded in the country after Austria and countries along the Balkans migration route imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the number of migrants able to cross.

Tensions between European countries worst affected by the migrant crisis were still running high, with Austria’s Chancellor Werner Faymann accusing Greece of “behaving like a travel agency”. Athens has threatened to block decisions at an upcoming EU-Turkey summit unless the bloc forces members to shoulder more of the refugee burden. Merkel is resisting calls at home and elsewhere in Europe for limits on refugees like Austria.

“Do you seriously believe that all the euro states that last year fought all the way to keep Greece in the eurozone – and we were the strictest – can one year later allow Greece to, in a way, plunge into chaos?” she said in an interview with public broadcaster ARD. “That is not my Europe”.