Wave of 7,000 refugees cross into Serbia from Macedonia

As a new wave of refugees moved through the Balkans, thousands of exhausted people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa crossed on foot Monday from Macedonia into Serbia on their way to the European Union.

The rush over the border followed Macedonia's decision to lift the blockade of its border with Greece, after thousands of refugees stormed past Macedonian police who tried to stop their entry by force.

Some 7,000 refugees, including many women with babies and small children mostly from Syria, crossed into Serbia over the weekend. Some were pushed in wheelchairs and wheelbarrows or walked on crutches. Hundreds more entered Macedonia from Greece on Monday.

The new refugee tide that has hit the Western Balkans has worried EU politicians and left Balkan countries struggling to cope with the humanitarian crisis.

More than 160,000 refugees have arrived so far in Greece this year, mostly crossing in inflatable dinghies from the nearby Turkish coast, while some 45,000 crossed through Macedonia over the past two months.

Few, if any, want to remain in Greece, which is in the grip of a financial crisis, or impoverished Macedonia. Most of the refugees who enter from Greece want to head straight to Macedonia's northern border and then north through Serbia and Hungary on their way to more prosperous EU countries such as Germany, the Netherlands or Sweden.

"I am from Iraq, I want to go to Germany," said Ali, barely speaking with exhaustion as he sat on a dusty field with columns of refugees heading for an overcrowded asylum center in the Serbian border town of Presevo.

After they formally ask for an asylum, they have three days to reach the border with Hungary which is rushing to build a barbed wire fence on its border with Serbia to block the refugees.

In a separate development, Greece's coast guard is searching for at least five people missing at sea after the dinghy they were using to cross from Turkey overturned off the coast of the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos. The coast guard said it had rescued six people and recovered the body of two men, and was searching the area for the missing.

The Greek coast guard said it had picked up 877 people in 30 search and rescue operations from Friday morning to Monday morning near the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Kos.

Separately, Italy's coast guard said it coordinated the rescue of some 4,400 people off Libya's coast Saturday, the largest number so far in a single day.

The coast guard said 22 rescue operations were carried out for motorized rubber dinghies and fishing boats, all crammed with refugees desperate to reach Europe's southern shores.

So far this year, some 110,000 refugees have been rescued off Libya and brought to southern Italian ports. On Sunday, the Italian coast guard said it had asked three cargo ships to help in rescues, as more smuggler ships needed assistance.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appealed on Sunday for greater support for the refugees traveling through the Balkan route. A statement said that "as this emergency continues to evolve across the Western Balkans and beyond, greater levels of collaboration and collective effort are necessary in order to manage the humanitarian needs of those affected."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press