Macedonia army building Greek border fence

Obama faces a barrage of opposition to his own plan to resettle Syrian 10,000 refugees in the United States in the coming year.

Violent clashes broke out on Thursday between Macedonian police and hundreds of migrants as they attempted to break through the fence at Idomneni on the Greek-Macedonian border.

Several police and army vehicles were damaged in the protests, the ministry said in a statement.

He is among thousands of migrants, who for the past week, have been camped out along a railroad track now littered with trash, bolting past Macedonian authorities at the first opportunity.

A woman is helped by another refugee to cross the Greek-Macedonian… Officials say the structure is needed to ensure migrants don’t slip across the frontier undetected, without going through official checkpoints and being registered.

Refugees fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq continue to pour into the European Union, funneling through Macedonia.

Struggling to cope with the high numbers of new arrivals, many Balkan countries relaxed transit rules over the summer as migrants headed to Germany and other countries northern Europe.

The security backlash has intensified after at least two of the bombers in the November 13 attacks in Paris were confirmed to have come through Greece, posing as refugees.

Two of the attackers slipped into Europe through Greece posing as refugees from Syria’s civil war, according to French prosecutors.

Macedonia said it was taking a similar tack.

The central agency responsible for registering asylum seekers says that the number of migrants arriving in the Netherlands this year already has surpassed the combined total for 2013 and 2014.

But Balkan countries, including Macedonia and Croatia, last week imposed new border restrictions, allowing passage only to people fleeing countries affected by war.

A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum.