A man holds his two children as police block a group of migrants trying to cross the Macedonian-Greek border, near the town of Gevgelija, yesterday.

DPA/Belgrade

Police in Macedonia clashed yesterday with thousands of migrants attempting to enter the country after being stranded in a no-man’s land near the border with Greece.
A day after the country declared a state of emergency over the influx of migrants, police deployed to the border with Greece and took up positions on a railroad track near Gevgelija, 120km south of Skopje, before firing tear gas and throwing stun grenades to keep the migrants away, A1 TV reported.
Several hundred refugees reportedly managed to enter Macedonia, but were being rounded up.
Others lay on the railway tracks in protest at the blockade, the vesti.mk news portal said.
Humanitarian groups said they had no access to the stranded migrants.
“Our teams are in the field and are waiting for police and the army to secure transport of assistance,” the Plus Info portal quoted Suzana Tuneva-Paunovska of the Red Cross as saying.
A1 TV reported that a small group of some 200 refugees in “vulnerable condition”, mostly women and children, was allowed to pass through.
The UN agency for refugees voiced concern about “the increasingly precarious situation” of the migrants.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said that Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki gave him assurances that the border would not be closed in the future.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon considered the issue of “grave concern”, said spokeswoman Eri Kaneko.
On Thursday, Macedonian police blocked the border on the main Skopje-Athens highway, holding thousands of migrants in a no-man’s land and only sporadically allowing small groups in.
But regular crossings, including on the main Skopje-Athens highway, remained open and fully operational.
Some locals from the border town of Gevgelija near the key highway were offering rides to migrants, taking €50 per person for a trip of a few hundred metres, Vesti reported.
Gevgelija straddles the main route for migrants who land in Greece and has been particularly hard-hit.
Thousands had been crowding the train station in the town for days trying to catch a ride to the border with Serbia, 200km north.
Local media on Thursday report that there were visibly fewer migrants, both in Gevgelija and in Tabanovce on the northern border and exit towards Serbia.
Macedonia justified its moves yesterday, saying that it wanted to boost the security of settlements in the area and to deal more efficiently with the sharply rising number of migrant arrivals.
Macedonia registered 44,000 migrants since the start of the year, the vast majority of them Syrians, along with many from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Virtually all sought to reach Germany and other wealthy European Union nations and were only transiting the so-called Balkan migrants corridor, through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia.
Only a few dozen have requested asylum in the transit countries.
Both Macedonia and Serbia worry that tens of thousands of migrants may become stranded on their soil.
Concern is growing as Hungary, the main EU gateway for refugees, intends to seal its border with a fence.
During a visit to a refugee centre in Presevo, in southern Serbia, the EU representative in Belgrade, Oscar Benedict, said that Brussels has earmarked €3.2mn in assistance for Serbia to deal with the refugees until the end of 2015.
He also said the EU, the International Organisation for Migration and UNHCR are preparing a project worth another €8mn to help both Serbia and Macedonia.