Macedonia forcibly returns thousands of refugees to Greece

Skopje, (IINA) - Thousands of desperate refugees, who had made a dramatic push into Macedonia, bypassing its sealed border by wading through the freezing waters of a river, were forcibly returned to Greece on Tuesday amid heightened tensions between the two countries, The Guardian reported.
As Athens and Skopje engaged in a war of words over the episode, hundreds of exhausted men, women and children began streaming back into the muddy, waterlogged camp they had sought to flee barely 24 hours earlier.
“They hit everyone – women, children, men – and said ‘you are going back’”, said Halad Al-Hassan, 32, from Raqqa, the Syrian city overrun by ISIS militants last summer. “People are very shocked, too shocked to even want to speak”, he sighed, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’ve been here in Idomeni for 27 days. It’s very bad, very cold, very unbelievable. Why does Macedonia do this? Why has Europe closed the borders?”
Dazed youngsters, blankets strewn across their shoulders against the biting cold, walked around aimlessly as charity workers, many of which worked through the night, strove to cater for the estimated 2,500 people pushed back into Greece.
Save the Children described how Macedonian authorities began sending people back in trucks, dropping children off shivering, wet and disorientated.
“Some people collapsed by the roadside and needed medical attention on the tarmac and those that made it back to the camp faced a night out in the open, with rain starting to fall around 4.30am”, the organization stated. “Up to 600 people remained stuck in the other side of the river”.
AG/IINA

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