Overwhelmed Macedonia holds up migrants in dusty no-man's land

A new group of more than a thousand immigrants wait at the border line of Macedonia and Greece to enter into Macedonia near Gevgelija railway station August 20, 2015. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski

GEVGELIJA, Macedonia (Reuters) - More than 1,000 migrants and refugees are gathered in a dusty no-man's land between Greece and Macedonia, held back by Macedonian police overwhelmed by a dangerous crush at a nearby railway station for trains heading north to Serbia.

Police periodically allow small groups through to join roughly another 1,000 at the once-sleepy Gevgelija railway station, unrecognisable since the surge in Middle Eastern, African and Asian migrants and refugees - many of them Syrians - trying to reach the European Union.