ATHENS: Greek police launched an operation on Wednesday to remove some 2,300 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 on board 45 buses,” the police said in a statement.

The migrants — mainly from Pakistan, Somalia, Morocco, Algeria and Bangladesh — will be sheltered in disused Olympic stadiums, they added.

Some 350 riot officers were mobilised at dawn for the operation, the statement said.

Humanitarian workers in the area had been asked to leave while reporters and photographers, some of whom were briefly detained, were held back at a distance of about three kilometres.

The evacuation was carried out without incident, and the police said media were moved away “to ensure their protection”.

Police dismantled migrant tents that have blocked Greece’s 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,” the police said.

With Macedonian authorities only letting through refugees from conflict zones — Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — migrants from other countries have been blocked on the border with Greece 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 when he grabbed high-voltage train cables.

After previously ruling out the use of force to clear the area and trying to persuade the migrants to leave voluntarily, Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas decided that intervention was necessary as European pressure and local complaints grew.

Greece is a staging post on the route towards the Balkans and on to western Europe for hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving from Turkey.

The Greece-Macedonia border crossing at Idomeni railway station, just across from Gevgelija, was closed on November 18 by the Macedonian authorities, with only those arriving from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan entitled to pass.

This heightened tensions between those deemed bona fide refugees and those stuck at the border with no prospect of being allowed through.

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 to their home country but Islamabad accepted only 20 of them, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said this week.

“We are forced to take initiatives, in contact with international organisations and European peers, to return those who are proven not to qualify for asylum,” Tsipras told state television ERT.

“We have asked Turkey to honour readmission agreements and have asked the same to happen with... Pakistan and Morocco,” he said.

“Greece cannot become a warehouse of souls for people who don’t want to stay here,” Tsipras said.

Next week members of the European Union’s Frontex border agency are due to deploy in the area.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2015