Small children were pushed through open carriage windows each time a Serbia-bound train pulled into the railway station in a Macedonian border town. A dangerous crush ensued as hundreds of Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis wrestled to climb aboard their quickest means to Belgrade, the last stop en route to Hungary and Europe's borderless Schengen zone.A few police officers and a Kurdish man with a large stick represent a half-hearted effort to keep order. This scene is repeated daily now in Gevgelija, rapidly becoming a new frontline, like the island of Kos in Greece or the French port of Calais, in the migrant and refugee crisis engulfing Europe. A Red Cross official estimated that 2,000 refugees per day are crossing from Greece to Macedonia, up from 1,000 several weeks ago, and converging at the train station. Many are racing to Hungary before completion of a 4-meter-high fence along its border with Serbia at the end of August. The fence, with its Cold War echoes in formerly communist eastern Europe, risks creating a bottleneck. This year alone, 90,000 people have sought asylum in Serbia, avoiding arrest before continuing north to Hungary. The real number passing through is likely much higher.Macedonia says it is doing everything it can to deal with the problem, but as in Serbia, the scale of the crisis has already far outstripped the meager resources of the former Yugoslavian republic. Beyond a couple of police officers, a Reuters reporter saw no sign of any official attempt to keep order at the train station on Friday and Saturday as thousands tried to board the two or three international trains that pass through each day. The platform has turned into an open-air market, with local Macedonians selling drinks, cigarettes and confectionaries. One man rents out phone chargers. "I've been here nine hours and haven't eaten anything today. Shame on this country," said 27-year-old Aziz Hasoon, who said he was from Syria.Hassan Ahmad, 50, from Damascus, said he had spent $16,000 since July 23 to get himself and his son this far, most of it going to smugglers and corrupt police officers. Ahmad said he had been kidnapped and tortured in Syria and forced to flee. "There's no way for me to survive there," he said. "I left my wife to her family and my son left his fiancee." On Friday, a young boy was hospitalized, his face covered in blood, after he climbed an electricity pylon to spot an oncoming train and was shocked when he touched a live wire.Gevgelija Mayor Ivan Frangov was quoted on Friday as saying Macedonia and Serbia should consider building their own fences. "This problem was not created by Macedonia or Gevgelija," he was quoted as saying by the Serbian state Tanjug news agency. "The problem is arriving through an EU member state, and that's Greece." Anas Sifrini, a young Syrian man from the devastated city of Aleppo, said he was jailed for almost a year and paid 11,000 euros to be released. He said he had been traveling for four months. As he spoke, a police officer prodded him with a rubber baton to keep him back from the train. "That's nothing," he said, "In Greece, I was arrested and beaten by a police officer, and when I complained to his boss he beat me again.""My wife and daughter are in Sweden. I will do everything to get there, not just four months, but four years if necessary."Meanwhile, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Saturday it is concerned by claims from migrants reaching the Greek island of Kos on inflatable boats that they were attacked at sea. Several people from Syria and Iraq who have arrived on Kos in the past week told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that they had been attacked by masked gunmen at sea, with some claiming the assailants stole their fuel and even motors. Some accused the Greek coast guard of assaulting them. "We have heard enough stories for us to be concerned," MSF humanitarian affairs officer Constance Theisen told AFP. An international humanitarian group in late July said it had begun investigating claims that "mafia gangs" or "special commandos of the Greek coastguard" were involved in such attacks, notably in the area of the island of Lesbos. The head of the Greek police's immigration department, Major General Zakharoula Tsirigoti, has denied the claims outright. MSF, which has been working in the Aegean islands since March, first heard such claims from migrants in July, Theisen said.A Turkish government official told AFP in Istanbul: "Unfortunately, the other [Greek] side resorts to inhumane methods including attacking boats." He added: "They are not addressing the problem of migrants."As the number of refugees, who have arrived in Europe by sea so far in 2015, has climbed up nearly 250,000, according to International Organization for Migration (IOM) data, at least 40 migrants died in the hold of a boat off Italy and some 320 others aboard were saved by the Italian navy on Saturday, the rescue ship's commander said. "Operation under way ... many migrants saved. At least 40 dead," the Italian navy said on Twitter, while the Corriere della Sera newspaper said those who died were found in the hold of the vessel, apparently having suffocated below deck. "We were faced with a very emotional scene," Commander Massimo Tozzi told the Italian AGI news agency, describing how some bodies were floating on the water. "The world finds itself facing the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War," EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said on Friday. Italy and Greece have borne the brunt of the emergency.IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said that the expected number of arrivals may appear high but EU has capacity to cope with it. "It is a number that could be easily absorbed by the European Union, a huge area with over 500 million people. In order to do so, EU member states must cooperate to develop a more coherent and humanitarian approach," Swing said.