Mud-soaked migrants fight for food

Desperate and freezing, migrants scramble over each other to grab food thrown out from the back of a van. It has been a long, cold night on the Greek-Macedonian border.

Children in the makeshift refugee and migrant camp at Idomeni, Greece.

In mud-soaked fields nearby, a chilly March daybreak reveals a bleak scene, after an overnight downpour left hundreds of tents drenched and children coughing miserably. "We have been waiting for six days," said Farah, a 32-year-old Iraqi woman from Baghdad, as the van distributing canned food and long-life milk was quickly mobbed and emptied in minutes.


"The food is not enough, everyone is lying to us and we are desperate," added Farah, among about 7 000 people - many stranded near the Idomeni border crossing for days who awoke under wet canvas among sodden wheat fields.

Fayez, a 27-year-old computer technician from Syria, agreed. "We have to queue for over three hours, for not enough food," he said. "We've been here four days. We want to go to Sweden, but our money is running out."

The grim weather has already taken a harrowing toll on the travellers' health: many children can be heard coughing and crying among the tents. Zineb Hosseini, a Syrian mother of five, said her family was "freezing".

"And now the wait begins anew," she added. The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity that is helping to run one of the area's two camps has reported widespread colds and several cases of gastroenteritis, whilst warning that tent and food supplies are running low.

"The situation here is quite chaotic. [People] are coming with taxis, on foot, with whatever means they can find," MSF representative Vicky Markolefa said.