Macedonia police use tear gas to push refugees back

Reports said the Macedonian police officers fired tear gas at refugees trying to enter from Greece after a night spent stranded in no-man's land by an emergency decree effectively sealing the Macedonian frontier.

Bloom Gist learned that at least four bloodied refugees were taken for treatment on the Greek side of the border, Reuters reported on Friday.

"They shoot us today, they shoot us today, I can tell you, I see it. We was in front of the place. Officer people, they… Officer people in Macedonia, they shoot the people," a refugee, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters.

Several thousand people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, many of them Syrian refugees, spent a cold night in no-man's land after Macedonia on Thursday declared a state of emergency and effectively blocked its southern frontier to refugees fleeing war.

Macedonian authorities, however, denied any clashes had taken place. Interior Ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski told AFP news agency, there was "no incident, no tear bombs... nothing like that on Macedonian side".

They police shoot us today, they shoot us today, I can tell you, I see it. We was in front of the place and I witnessed everything that went down in that place.  Unnamed refugee told Bloom Gist source

Earlier speaking to Reuters Kotevski said that "we cannot hermetically close the borders". But "we will try to reduce illegal border entry to a minimum", he said.

Hungary has begun erecting a fence to try to keep the distraught refugee out.

Macedonia appealed on Wednesday for neighbouring countries to send train carriages to address the demand.

Porous border

The United Nations refugee agency urged the government to do more, saying it should allocate a site to accommodate people fleeing war.

"Depending on how Greece uses ships to de-congest the islands, that will also temporarily increase the arrivals here," said Alexandra Krause, senior protection officer at the UNHCR in Macedonian capital, Skopje.

Refugees desperate to board train in Macedonia

"The Macedonian government needs to provide an appropriate site to be able to shelter the arrivals properly and to ensure sufficient assistance," Krause told Reuters.

The only site currently being used is at the local police station, where Krause said the UNHCR had constructed some shelter with capacity for just 165 people.

Krause said the Red Cross had access to the migrants and refugees in the border area but warned of harsher weather approaching.

Almost 39,000 refugees, most of them Syrians, have been registered passing through Macedonia over the past month, double the number from the month before.

Source: Bloom Gist World, Agencies, Al Jazeera