Athens, Greece | AFP | Wednesday 12/9/2015 - 21:27 GMT
by John HADOULIS
Greek police launched an operation Wednesday to remove more than 2,000 migrants gathered at the border with Macedonia, after Skopje began filtering those who can cross the frontier by nationality.
"Some 2,300 foreigners of various nationalities are being moved to open hospitality facilities in Athens onboard 45 buses," police said in a statement.
The migrants -- mainly from Pakistan, Somalia, Morocco, Algeria and Bangladesh -- will be sheltered in disused Olympic stadiums, police said, adding that some 350 riot officers were mobilised at dawn for the operation.
Humanitarian workers had been asked to leave the area while reporters and photographers, some of whom were briefly detained, were held back at a distance of about three kilometres (two miles).
Police said media were moved away "to ensure their protection".
Greece and Macedonia are both on the migrant trail that has seen hundreds of thousands of people, fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere, head to northern Europe this year after landing from Turkey in flimsy boats.
UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called Europe's refugee situation "chaotic" as he visited a refugee centre near the Finnish capital Helsinki with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
"The present chaotic situation with people moving across the Balkans and then coming essentially to three or four countries -- Austria, Germany, Sweden and Finland -- is not sustainable," Guterres said.
"Many European countries are not doing their part of the job," he added, calling for a fairer distribution of the influx.
The EU is planning to distribute 160,000 asylum-seekers across the bloc under a quota system as it struggles to cope with its worst migration crisis since World War II, but is facing legal challenges from Hungary and Slovakia.
- Macedonia builds new border fence -
Macedonia has started building a second barrier on the Greek border in a bid to better control the influx, a military source in Skopje told AFP.
"We will build a fence near the border crossing at Medzitlija" in the southwest, the source said.
"This part of the border is porous and we want to stop illegal entries."
Macedonia has already built a fence 2.5 metres (eight-feet) high stretching some three kilometres at the Gevgelija crossing, further east.
On November 19, Macedonia began screening new arrivals for nationality, only letting through people from conflict zones -- Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
People considered "economic migrants", from countries such as Morocco and Pakistan, have been stuck on the border for days or even weeks.
Their anger boiled over last week when groups of migrants seized communal tents operated by humanitarian agencies and destroyed some prefab houses set up by the UN refugee agency.
One migrant was electrocuted to death when he grabbed high-voltage train cables.
Police on the Greek side on Wednesday dismantled tents that have blocked the main train connection with Macedonia for the past month, leading to losses for the rail operator and Greek exporters.
"The operation of the railway line has been fully restored," police said.
After previously ruling out the use of force to clear the area, Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas decided that intervention was necessary as European pressure and local complaints grew.
In Athens the migrants will be allowed to file for asylum but the government plans to repatriate them when possible.
Greece recently sought to return some 50 Pakistanis but Islamabad accepted only 20 of them, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said this week.
"Greece cannot become a warehouse of souls for people who don't want to stay here," Tsipras said.
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