Greece rages at neighbors as fears migrants could be halted

Greece raged at neighbors and began bussing refugees and migrants back from its northern border on Tuesday, after new restrictions by countries on the main land route to Western Europe trapped hundreds behind a bottleneck at the frontier.

Athens filed a rare diplomatic protest with fellow EU member Austria for excluding Greek officials from a high-level meeting on measures aimed at curbing Europe's biggest inward migration since World War Two.

More than a million migrants and refugees passed through Greece last year, and nearly 100,000 have already arrived this year. Nearly all reached Greece by sea and traveled onward by land over the Balkan peninsula to richer EU countries further north and west, above all Germany.

But several of the countries along that route have been taking new measures to close their frontiers, prompting those further down the chain to impose similar restrictions to prevent a bottleneck.

Greek police removed migrants from the Greek-Macedonian border on Tuesday after additional passage restrictions imposed by Macedonian authorities left hundreds of people, mainly Afghans, stuck at the border.

About 450 of them were loaded onto buses to be taken to reception centers in Athens, joining hundreds more fresh arrivals from outlying Greek islands who arrived on the Greek mainland on Tuesday morning.

At a petrol filling station at the community of Almyros, 270 kilometers north of Athens, up to 600 people, including Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis, waited for word on when their buses could continue the journey on to the Macedonian border. - Read More at the reuters

Greece rages at neighbors as fears migrants could be halted