Train in Macedonia overruns another asylum seeker headed for EU

Saturday, 25 April 2015 1:50 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 25 April 2015 2:05 PM ]

A picture taken on April 24, 2015 shows railroad tracks near the town of Veles, central Macedonia. (© AFP)

A train in Macedonia has run over and killed an undocumented immigrant walking along the railway toward the borderless European Union (EU) zone in a second such incident in two days.

Police said the deceased man was an elderly Afghan, who was hit by an international train in the Ilinden suburb of the capital, Skopje.

The train had departed from the Greek city of Thessaloniki and was headed to the Serbian capital, Belgrade, when the incident took place.

A similar incident involving more migrants took place on Thursday, leaving at least 14 people dead. The victims were said to be from Somalia and Afghanistan.

Migrants sit at the border post of Idomeni, some 600 km North of Athens, on the Greece-Macedonia border, April 21, 2015. (© AFP)

The migrants were following the rail tracks north of the central Macedonian town of Veles to reach the European Union (EU)’s borderless Schengen zone in Hungary through Serbia when the incident happened, police said.

“The driver tried to alert them by horn and stop the train. Many managed to escape but 14 were killed,” a local prosecutor said in a statement.

The train was heading from Thessaloniki to Belgrade. The driver reported seeing some 50 people sitting on or hiking along the tracks but did not manage to stop in time, according to the prosecutor.

Undocumented migrants cross the railways at the border post of Idomeni, some 600 km North of Athens, at the Greece-Macedonia border, April 21, 2015. (© AFP)

A police spokeswoman, Anita Stojkovska, also said eight of the migrants were arrested, while the rest of the survivors of unknown nationality managed to flee the scene.

Macedonia, which is not an EU member itself, borders the EU and has been a candidate to join the bloc since 2005.

The latest tragedy in Macedonia comes a day after EU leaders had a summit to deal with the issue of migrants, particularly the crisis of recurring migrant ship accidents in the Mediterranean.

On April 19, some 800 migrants drowned after an overcrowded boat capsized and sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa on its way to Europe. The fatal incident has been the deadliest in a series of migrant shipwrecks that have claimed over 1,750 lives so far in 2015.

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