Hundreds Of Refugees Force Their Way Into Macedonia

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Hundreds of refugees in Greece have forced their way over the Macedonian border as police fired stun grenades in a failed bid to stop them breaking through. For the second day in a row, police fired stun grenades and clashed with refugees trying to rush over the border between Greece and Macedonia.

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Idomeni, on the Greek side of the border, said he heard seven loud blasts from his position 150m away. The AFP news agency said the refugees scrambled over barbed wire fences on Saturday as the border guards tried to stop them.

Thousands of rain-soaked refugees have been trapped in a no man’s land since Thursday. Overnight on Friday, police had let small groups of families with children cross the border by walking to a railway station in the Macedonian town of Gevgelija, where most take trains to the border with Serbia, before heading towards EU-member Hungary. Those who could not cross, including many women and children, spent the rainy and chilly night in the open, the AP news agency reported.