Thousands of migrants leave Macedonia by train to Serbia

If they manage to enter Hungary, the refugees could travel freely across the borders of most of the 28 EU member states.

Gasic added that large numbers of people coming from Greece and Macedonia had entered Serbia over the past 24 hours and that a similar flow was expected in the next two days.

As tensions grew, the Bulgarian Government said it was preparing to send its army to secure its borders with Macedonia and Greece. Many children also lost their parents in the chaos and were left shouting “mama, baba”. Police dozens more migrants fled, along with the suspected smugglers.

Thousands of others, including women with babies and men carrying small children, then tried to climb over razor wire or run across a field not protected by the fence to enter Macedonia.

Macedonia declared a state of emergency on Thursday and sealed its southern frontier to migrants pouring in at a rate of 2,000 per day.

The worldwide Organization for Migration said as of last week that more than 250,000 migrants had crossed by sea to Europe this year, mostly landing in Italy and Greece.

A migrant man holding a boy react as they are forced back as Macedonian riot police officers and migrants clashed near the border train station of Idomeni, northern Greece, as they wait to be allowed by the Macedonian police… “These are people entitled to worldwide protection”, he said.

“We have worked all night to admit them“.

“Those countries [Serbia, Macedonia] already have a high rate of unemployment, so they probably are not so attractive to migrants, they probably will want to keep moving to the countries where they can potentially get work”, Doyle said.

Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has expressed concern for “thousands of vulnerable refugees and migrants, especially women and children, now massed on the Greek side of the border amid deteriorating conditions”.

Serbia is temporarily accommodating them in the southern town of Presevo and has opened to camps offering shelter, food and medicines.

After days of resistance, Macedonian border forces have finally allowed thousands of migrants who have fled their countries to cross the border of Greece on Saturday.

Once the migrants reach Serbia, many try to make their way to Hungary, which is a major crossing point into the EU, although the country is building a four metre barbed wire fence along its 175km border to stop the influx. “But we will do our best for the migrants that arrive to be registered and to be treated as humanely as possible”. This means that once in Hungary people can travel onwards throughout much of Europe (excluding Britain and Ireland) without needing to show documents at global borders.

Thirty-two-year-old Saeed from Syria said of the blocked border: “We know this was not Macedonia and the Macedonian police”.

The Greek coast guard said it had picked up 877 people in 30 search and rescue operations from Friday morning to yesterday morning near the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Kos.