Macedonia sends around 1,500 migrants back to Greece

Macedonia sends around 1,500 migrants back to Greece

Macedonia has returned about 1,500 migrants and refugees who crossed the border on Monday to Greece, Reuters reports, citing police said on Tuesday.

Most of the migrants, who marched out of the Idomeni transit camp in northern Greece on Monday and got around a border fence, had been taken back to Greece on Monday or overnight on trucks, an official said.

Greece’s Deputy Defense Minister Dimitris Vitsas said he could neither confirm nor deny the reports.

Reporters and aid officials on the scene said the migrants had been left at the Greek border and that there were migrants on both the Greek and Macedonian sides of the border.

The 1,500 migrants hiked for hours along muddy paths and forded a rain-swollen river to get around the border fence where they were detained by Macedonian security forces.

About 30 reporters, including a Reuters photographer, were also detained.

A second group of about 600 migrants was prevented from crossing into Macedonia on Monday and many of these spent the night camping in the Greek mountains, according to a Reuters photographer.

At least 12,000 people, including thousands of children, have been stranded in the Idomeni camp, their path to the EU blocked after Macedonia and other nations along the so-called Western Balkan route closed their borders.

European Union leaders are trying to stem a flow of migrants and refugees that brought more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond to the EU since early 2015.

They are due to hold a new summit with Turkey this week to seal an agreement intended to halt the exodus.

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