Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
In an interview with Hungarian business weekly Figyelo, he said Macedonia will probably also need "some kind of a physical defense" though this would not be a long-term solution. "But if we take seriously what Europe is asking us to do, we will need that, too. Either soldiers or a fence or a combination of the two," said Poposki. West European states like France and Germany have criticized Hungary's ongoing construction of a 175-km (108-mile) long, 3.5-metre (11.5-foot)-high fence along its border with Serbia to channel migrants to crossings where they can be registered.
Over 160,000 migrants have entered Hungary from the south this year, transition Greece, Macedonia and Serbia in that order from war-torn or impoverished countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Almost all seek to reach wealthier western and northern European Union states like Germany and Sweden. A single-day record of 7,000 Syrian refugees crossed on Monday into Macedonia, a small and relatively poor former Yugoslav republic.
German Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth told the same newspaper that Germany expected countries to register migrants who entered the EU over their borders, but that fences were not the right approach. "We must build a Europe where we protect freedom and guarantee security, but where there is no place for either fences or walls," Roth said. Poposki said Macedonia was doing its best to register all migrants. "But whenever we take seriously what our European partners ask of us, trying to control the border and stop people, we immediately receive a negative international reaction," he added, echoing Hungarian complaints.
Macedonia mulls fencing off border against migrants: foreign minister
In Roszke, a Hungarian border town, police used tear gas to break up a brief scuffle involving about 200 migrants requesting asylum, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Police said the migrants were growing impatient with registration delays. So far the Hungarian border fence — which is being hastily built to keep the migrants out — consists of three layers of razor wire along the country's 174-kilometer (109-mile) border with Serbia. But it's hardly a formidable barrier.
One group of migrants, including women and children, crawled under it Wednesday, using blankets, sleeping bags, jackets and a stick to raise the wire. As a police car approached, they dashed through a field. "(It's been) very, very difficult," Odei, a Syrian migrant from Daraa, said once he reached Hungary. "We were here from yesterday. We are very hungry. There's no food, there's no medicine for the children, there's nothing. We are so tired."
These migrants are following the Balkans route, from Turkey to Greece by sea, up north to Macedonia by bus or foot, by train through Serbia and then walking the last few miles into EU member Hungary. That avoids the more dangerous Mediterranean Sea route from North Africa to Italy, where dozens of bodies were found Wednesday in the hull of a smugglers' boat that was rescued off Libya's northern coast. Once inside the 28-nation EU, most migrants seek to reach richer nations such as Germany, The Netherlands or Sweden.
In Germany, however, far-right protesters booed and jeered Chancellor Angela Merkel as she visited an asylum center Wednesday in the eastern town of Heidenau that was the scene of weekend riots. Merkel urged Germans to stand up against hatred and vowed zero tolerance for attacks against refugees. "It's shameful and repulsive what we experienced here," Merkel said. Over 10,000 migrants, including many women with babies and small children, have crossed into Serbia over the past few days and headed toward Hungary.
MORE
The minister, Omran al-Zoubi, said in a rare comment from Damascus, that the migrants are mostly fleeing from areas held by rivals of President Bashar Assad's government, including the Islamic State group. His remarks, carried by state media, say European countries, "which sent terrorists" to Syria and imposed economic sanctions on the Syrian people, must take responsibility for their anti-Syria policies.
European countries have been harsh critics of Assad's government and thousands of fighters from around the world, including Europe, have come to Syria to fight with extremist groups such as the IS against government forces. In some cases, Europeans who went to Syria returned home to stage deadly attacks - such as the French suspect in a 2014 attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium, who had come back from fighting with extremists in Syria.
Syrian refugees walk on a railway track toward a makeshift camp for asylum seekers in Roszke, southern Hungary, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2015. Leaders of the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday that Hungary faces a bigger wave of 42,000 asylum seekers in the next 10 days and will need international help to provide shelter on its border, where newcomers already are complaining bitterly about being left to sleep in frigid fields.
Authorities around Europe have repeatedly warned of the threat posed by the return of Western jihadis, trained in warfare in the Mideast. France counts at least 1,200 citizens in the war zone in Syria - headed there, returned or dead. Both the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have threatened France, home to Western Europe's largest Muslim population. But Damascus is not forcing anyone out, al-Zoubi said. "Any Syrian abroad can return to his country anytime he wants," he added.
News from The Associated Press
He knows that hundreds of migrants - men, women and children - have died when their smuggler boats capsized, and he's seen the heart-wrenching pictures of the drowned Syrian boy who washed ashore in Turkey last week. But he's also seen TV footage of thousands of migrants making their way across Europe and being welcomed in certain quarters. After more than a decade of chaos and war in his homeland, it's a gamble he's willing to take. "The situation in Iraq is getting worse every day," said Mohammed, a 29-year-old father of two. "I'm fed up. I can't continue living here and can't feed my family. There's nothing left in Iraq." He quit his two jobs, as a civil servant and a tea seller, and sold his belongings to buy a one-way ticket to Iraq's northern Kurdish region, where he'll cross into Turkey and join an unprecedented tide of migrants fleeing war and poverty across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. His wife and two children will stay behind, praying for his safety and hoping to be reunited with him somewhere more secure.
Like many Iraqis, he's wanted to leave for years, but is only doing so now because he's seen the images of migrants being welcomed in Germany and Austria. He's found videos online offering advice on how to sail from Turkey to Greece: Check the weather forecast before leaving; wear a life vest if you can't swim; get rid of your inflatable raft as soon as you arrive in Greece so the coast guard doesn't send you back on it. Migration is nothing new for Iraqis, many of whom fled persecution under Saddam Hussein, the war with Iran in the 1980s and the crippling economic sanctions following the 1990 Gulf War. Well over a million Iraqis fled the violence and chaos that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. But until recently the only realistic destinations were neighboring countries like Syria and Jordan, where work opportunities were limited. Now Iraqis are on the move again, joining Syrians, Afghans, Eritreans and others in the largest tide of migrants since World War II.
There are no official figures for how many Iraqis have left, or how many may have died on the journey. Brig. Gen. Riyadh al-Kaabi, who heads Baghdad's main passport office, has noted a "tangible increase" in requests for passports, with up to 12,000 issued each day. But he can't say how many are for people who intend to quit the country for good. Of the more than 200,000 refugees and migrants who have arrived in Greece this year, more than 5,000 hail from Iraq, making it the fifth most common country of origin after Syria, Afghanistan, Albania and Pakistan. The vast majority of the migrants do not want to stay in financially stricken Greece, and head to the more prosperous European north on an overland route through the Balkans.
Mohammed says he's driven to leave by a mixture of fear and poverty. A bomb blast tore through his left side and arm as he rode on a microbus in 2006, at the height of the country's sectarian violence. He also struggles to make ends meet. Even with two jobs, his monthly income was just $575, of which $450 went to rent and electricity. "I want to end up in a state where my rights are preserved and where I can find mercy for me and my family. No more, no less," he said. With $2,100 in his pocket, he left Baghdad on Thursday. He has embarked on a long journey that will include an hours-long ship crossing from Turkey to Greece along the same route where two Syrian boys and their mother drowned last week after their ship capsized. Photos of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who washed up dead on the beach, galvanized global sympathy for the refugees, leading some countries to ease restrictions on accepting migrants.
MORE
