Scores of refugees living at Greece's Idomeni makeshift border camp surrounded a truck filled with bags of food and clothes on 16 March and climbed into the back, emptying the truck of its load. Men, women and children stuck at the closed border crossing pushed and shoved to get near the truck as people inside threw bags of essential supplies, including baby powder, milk, biscuits and toilet paper into the crowd.

More than 10,000 people, including thousands of children, are stranded in the tent city on the Greek border with Macedonia. They are unable to continue their journey because Macedonia and other countries along the so-called Balkan route have shut their borders to the migrants.

The food and drinking water provided by aid agencies and volunteers at the camp are not enough, forcing migrants, who have been sleeping rough for days in a waterlogged field, to queue for hours for a sandwich or a cup of soup. Abid, a man from Damascus, tried to reach the truck but failed. He said the situation was making people behave like animals.

"We are losing our human behaviour under this pressure. It's a shame but it's normal, a normal result, this is not a human...humankind life," said Abid. "Look to any animal farm − it's better than here − so this bad result is normal," he added.

Over 43,000 migrants and refugees are bottled up in squalid conditions in Greece after Macedonia closed its border, and more are arriving daily despite Nato's Aegean sea patrols. European Union leaders will hold talks in Brussels on 17 March with Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to try to hammer out a deal to end the continent's worst migrant crisis since the Second World War.

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