Several Thousands Migrants Arrive in Serbia On Saturday

The border was opened after dramatic scenes on Saturday in which hundreds of refugees forced their way through the barbed wire fences, many carrying small children, as police hurled stun grenades to try and stop them.

Police officers continue to guard the frontier but not a single person remained in the strip of land between the Greek-Macedonian border where more than 2,000 people, including women and children, had been stuck since Thursday, according to AFP reporter. There were many children and pregnant women among them, an AFP photographer said.

“Macedonian authorities should be protecting migrants, including children and those among them who may be fleeing war and persecution, not giving the police a green light to fire at them”, Emina Cerimovic, research fellow at the rights group, said in a statement.

Our correspondent said that while hundreds on Saturday night had managed to cross the border by sprinting through open fields, many others had been sent back to Greece, where they alleged harsh treatment from Macedonian police and showed Al Jazeera their injuries.

The United Nations (UN) estimates that some 160,000 migrants have landed in Greece since the beginning of the year; 50,000 arriving in the past month alone.

A day after storming past border checkpoints aimed at keeping them out of the European Union, thousands of migrants – most from Syria, but also some from Iraq and Afghanistan – crowded buses in Macedonia heading north toward the Serbian border.

Thousands of migrants, mostly Syrian refugees, travelled through Macedonia and Serbia on Sunday towards western Europe as Italy’s foreign minister said the escalating crisis threatened the bloc’s “soul”.

From Gevgelija, the migrants hope to get a 200-kilometre ride north, to Tabanovce on the border with Serbia, the next country on their trek away from violence at home and security in the European Union.

Germany has been largely welcoming to the tens of thousands of refugees arriving each month, but attacks on them and on refugee shelters have been on the rise.

Five trains – three regular and two emergency – with a capacity of between 100 and 700 passengers, departed from Gevgelija on Friday, the state railway said.

Pakistani man Faroq Awais, 30, said: “Last night it was raining and we couldn’t go anywhere inside”.

In the Macedonian border town of Gevgelija, two out of five scheduled trains, each capable of holding between 100 and 700 passengers, left Saturday with the service laid on exclusively for refugees and migrants.

But far more have since arrived on the Greek side, converging on a filthy, chaotic strip of frontier with little sign of an organised aid effort.

Macedonia and its northern neighbour Serbia are not part of the EU, but Hungary, its northern neighbour, is an EU member and is part of the Schengen passport-free area.

The Macedonian government said it could take no more and sent riot police and the army to the border.