Dozens of migrants break through Macedonian border: AFP

Several dozen migrants managed to illegally cross from Greece into Macedonia on April 24 -- a border that has been shut since February, an AFP photographer reported.
 
The photographer saw the group in the Macedonian town of Gevgelija, across from Idomeni in Greece where more than 10,000 migrants have been stuck for weeks in grim conditions after a series of border closures on the Balkan migrant route.
 
The photographer, who was travelling with a group of journalists, saw a person "jump out of the bush" in front of his vehicle.
 
"Then I saw two or three others, then around 50 resting in the bush," he said, estimating there were "many others" following this group.
 
The migrants would have made a three-hour journey from Idomeni including the crossing of a river.
 
The group, including "many women, children, even a woman carrying a cat," then disappeared from the journalists' sight, the photographer said, adding that they "looked scared" and "tired".
 
In the Macedonian capital Skopje, police denied any knowledge of the incident.
 
"I have no such information," police spokesman Toni Angelovski told AFP.
 
But he added: "We have these kind of illegal attempts to cross (into the country) on a daily basis, and police are taking measures to protect the border."    

Some 54,000 people, many of them fleeing the war in Syria, have been stranded on Greek territory since the closure of the migrant route through the Balkans in February.    

More than 10,000 are in the overcrowded camp in Idomeni, separated from Macedonia with a double barbed wire fence.
 
Groups have intermittently tried to cross the border, where they face the Macedonian police and army.