Scores of protesters in Macedonia have broken through a police cordon and entered parliament to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-long deadlock in talks to form a new government.

The protesters attacked police and lawmakers late Thursday, after the country's Social Democrats and parties representing Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority voted for a new speaker.

Macedonia has been without a government since December, with the long-governing conservative and rival Social Democrats split over whether to consider ethnic minority party demands to make Albanian an official second language throughout the country.