The police official said the migrants would be taken to Athens on
buses and will be accommodated in migration centers before being sent
back to their home countries.
Greece starts removing stranded migrants at Macedonia border(Reuters)
Greek police started removing hundreds of migrants stranded on the Greek-Macedonian border and blocking rail traffic on Wednesday, a police official and a Reuters eyewitness said.
Some 1,200 people mostly from Pakistan, Morocco and Iran, were stuck near the northern Greek town of Idomeni, demanding to cross into Macedonia to reach northern Europe after non-EU Balkan states began filtering migrants by nationality.
The police official said the migrants would be taken to Athens on buses and will be accommodated in migration centers before being sent back to their home countries.
Hundreds
of thousands of people streamed into Europe this year, mostly through
Greece, but Balkan states began blocking passage last month to all but
Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, who are considered as refugees because they
are fleeing war zones.
Clashes have flared in the
last two weeks between police and stranded migrants blocking the
Greek-Macedonian crossing for refugees and the railway line running
between the two countries. A Moroccan man was electrocuted to death on
the line last week.
Macedonia has erected a metal fence to keep others out and plans to extend it to cover more than 40 km (25 miles) of the border.
More
than 600,000 people have arrived in Greece this year by making the
short but perilous journey by boat or rubber dinghy from Turkey to
outlying islands. Thousands more have drowned.
In
another such incident, Greek coastguard recovered the bodies of 11
people, including five children, after their wooden boat sank off the
island of Farmakonisi in the early hours on Wednesday, a coastguard
official said.
Some 23 people were rescued, while 13 were still missing, the official added.
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