Refugees Pile Up at Greek Border on Tightening Controls
- More than 13,000 are stalled at Greek-Macedonian common border
- Hundreds more arrive each day to crowded camp, UNHCR says
Refugees on the Macedonia-Greece border on March 8, 2016.
Photographer: Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty ImagesThousands of refugees piled up at the border between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, unable to continue northward as regional authorities tightened controls before European Union leaders finalize an agreement to stem the flow of migrants.
More than 13,000 people, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, were stalled at Greece’s northern border, while hundreds more a day continued to arrive to a rain-soaked, muddy camp near the Idomeni crossing between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia, once part of Yugoslavia, said Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the United Nations Refugee Agency, in a phone interview on Wednesday. About 5,000 of them are children and many are sick after spending days in the open, he said.