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AT LEAST 260 people needed medical attention yesterday after police fired tear gas at migrants as they tried to break through the Greek-Macedonia border, where over 11,000 people are stranded, a charity said.
It was the latest violence to erupt at the flashpoint Idomeni crossing, where huge numbers of migrants and refugees – many fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and beyond – have been camped out since mid-February after Balkan states closed their borders, cutting off access to northern Europe.
Macedonian police accused the crowds of hurling stones and other objects at them in a bid to break down the fence, saying they had used tear gas to protect themselves.
“Two hundred people were treated by our medical unit for breathing problems, 30 for wounds caused by plastic bullets and 30 for other injuries,” Achilleas Tzemos of French medical charity Doctors Without Borders told AFP.
The incident, amid the EU’s worst migration crisis since World War II, was sparked by fresh rumours that the Idomeni border crossing into Macedonia, largely closed since mid-February, was about to open.
According to a Greek police source, hundreds of migrants had gathered by the fence to demand the border be opened. When they tried to force the barrier, Macedonian police began firing tear gas.
The clashes came as an EU delegation visited Turkey and urged the country to carefully implement a deal under which all migrants arriving at the bloc’s borders from Turkey now face being returned there.
At the scene, protestors with their faces covered with scarves or smeared with toothpaste as a makeshift protection against tear gas could be seen hurling rocks at the fence, an AFP correspondent said, adding that some fainted in the suffocating atmosphere.
Part of the fence appeared to have been torn down.
Others ran for cover as tear gas grenades exploded nearby, sending clouds of gas wafting into the air.
Macedonian police, however, denied that anyone had been injured by plastic bullets.
‘Not using bullets’
“We are not using any kind of bullets as they are forbidden by law in Macedonia. We are not using batons as we are on the other side of the fence,” spokeswoman Liza Bendevska told AFP.
“We are using all allowed chemical means.”
Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for Greece’s migration coordination agency, however, condemned what he called the “dangerous” and “reprehensible” tactic of using “plastic bullets, tear gas and stun grenades”.
Earlier, another Macedonian police spokesman said the mob had hurled stones and other objects at police, injuring three of them, and that they had used tear gas to try and break up the protest.
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since we can show the Dutch how to circumvent taxes, perhaps they can show us how to run a railroad?
It would help if we had 4 times as many people in an area half the size of Ireland.
@Elma Phudd: You mean just the size of munster. Which is less than quarter the size of ireland
Sounds like a well run operation that knows what it is doing. Runs a great service AND makes A billion euro in profit for its owner the Dutch state…
Our bus and train services have to be subsidized to the tune of a billion and still offer terrible, infrequent, unreliable service with poor, unclean trains and is overstaffed with overpaid and incompetent management and staff…
Pity Irish state agencies don’t have the same nationalistic tendencies.
@iohanx: They do. Both NAMA and IBRC use section 110 charity status to dodge their taxes and make their balance sheets look more favourable for propaganda purposes. I wonder how the establishment mouthpiece above would try to spin that accounting 3 card trickery?
@Drew TheChinaman :): I don’t know where you get you figures from but the annual contract between the NTA and Irish Rail was €117 million last year.
The reason our trains aren’t as profitable is we are a stone age society when it comes to high rise. You need high density high rise in urban centres to make public transport work.
Our muppet politicians reduced maximum height from six to four storeys.
@Irish Spider-Man: and the Dutch railway company had an operating profit of 107mil this year and accumulated profits totaling a billion.
So assuming similar levels of profit for the Dutch and subsidy for the Irish over the last number of years. One has made the state a billion while running a very good service and the other cost the state a billion while running a poor service.
What the Dutch are doing is legal just exactly the same as Apple does, except unlike Apple the Dutch pay the full 12.5 % tax. So Apple does legally owe us the difference so that they are tax compliant in Ireland.
@Paul Lane:
It’s nothing like Apple. Apple sells products to other countries and these other countries quite rightly would like to charge tax to organisations trading within their jurisdiction. Any tax liability to Apple should be to the all the countries Apple is trading in and not just Ireland.
@Nick Allen: And what about the tax that the Dutch government would like to receive as their railway trades there. Holland is outside Ireland just like those countries Apple does business with…So no difference at all, and completely legal except Apple did not pay the full 12.5% which is due to us.
U2′s conglomerate moved to The Netherlands a few years ago avoiding paying Irish taxes. The Dutch Railway moved to Ireland. We’re even.
@Juan Venegas: two wrongs don’t make a right.
@Ian Moloney: You’re right. Two wrongs make a we’re even.
Let me get this straight. The Dutch state is paying us €13 million a year rather than paying itself €26 million while keeping €1 billion hidden under the bed. I’m sure the Dutch people would like to see better use made of their savings.
A reverse U2.
2U
Somethign about the Dutch – maybe that Turkish guy isn’t too far off the truth – remember Rabo Direct the straight talking bank? that was fined billions!! Imagine these clowns had the hard neck to lecture us.
And u 2 invest in holland to avoid tax
have your say