Migrants seek out dangerous river route
Print Edition
HUNDREDS of migrants and refugees walked out of an overcrowded camp on the Greek-Macedonian border yesterday, determined to use a dangerous crossing to head north.
More than 300 people, including dozens of children, were heading west toward a river that crosses the border, about 5 kilometers outside the village of Idomeni, where some 14,000 people are stranded at a sprawling camp. They refused to turn back at a Greek police cordon outside the camp.
More than 40,000 people have been stranded in Greece after Macedonia and other ex-Yugoslav countries closed their borders to migrants and refugees, prompting them to seek more dangerous crossings.
Underscoring the risks, police in Macedonia said the bodies of two men and one woman, believed to be migrants, were found yesterday in the Suva Reka river near the border with Greece. Twenty migrants crossed safely and another three were hospitalized, authorities said.
“This is the situation in which people have become desperate and frustrated,” said Ljubinka Brasnarska, a spokeswoman in Macedonia for the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. “The restrictions imposed by the countries have forced people to take desperate actions.”
Police and armed forces on the Macedonian side of the border have stepped up patrols along parts of the newly built border fence where migrants are likely to cross. Parts of the fence are made up solely of coils of razor wire, while breaks in the barrier also occur at rivers and mountain slopes on the border, mainly to the east of Idomeni.
More than 8,500 refugees traveled to the Greek islands from Turkey last week.
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