Tension between migrants, refugees at border

The agreement with Frontex will see the border agency provide personnel to help register refugees and migrants at Greece’s border with FYROM, where some 6,000 people have now amassed as a result of Skopje refusing to allow anyone except Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, who can qualify as refugees, through.

Macedonia has stopped allowing migrants to cross the border unless they are from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan and considered to be refugees.

A migrant died of electrocution Thursday after clashes broke out between refugees and migrants trapped on the Greek-Macedonian border, Greek police said.

Chris Morris reports from Idomeni.

Macedonia’s Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki welcomed the decision, saying it will help defuse tensions at his country’s border with Greece.

Macedonian police officers stop stranded migrants in a forest, as they try to cross the Greek-Macedo … Alternate Minister for Migration Policy Yiannis Mouzalas said Thursday that Athens had not made the request for assistance earlier because it needed to assess its needs first.

Meanwhile, buses full of people who had arrived elsewhere in Greece kept coming. Protests have swelled among desperate migrants stranded for days in squalid tent camps on the border near the Greek town of Idomeni in temperatures barely above freezing.

At the same border, a man believed to be from Morocco was fatally electrocuted after touching high-power railway cable when he climbed on top of a train. “Migrants at Greece’s northern border will be checked and those found not properly identified will be registered”, Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri said in the statement.

Unable to cope with the torrent of people flowing in this year, countries north of Greece have erected razor-wire fences and reintroduced border controls, casting doubts about the viability of Europe’s 26-nation passport-free Schengen travel zone. But Greece’s neighbors could reintroduce border controls for Greek people if the country were deemed to be “seriously neglecting its obligations”.

Yet no one has yet boarded a train chartered in Idomeni to bring them back to the capital, witnesses and the IOM said. “Obviously, (the solution) will not be a stroll in the woods… nobody likes to see the use of violence or anything else”.

The boat was carrying a total of seven migrants, and the coast guard says three survivors were pulled from the sea after Thursday’s capsizing off the island of Farmakonissi.

European Union officials accept Greek criticism that other states have failed to organise facilities to take in refugees but say Athens, despite the economic problems that saw it almost drop out of the eurozone this year, could do more. Greek media reported the country requested further emergency funding Thursday from the European Union for the immigration crisis.