At least 7,000 people, including many parents lugging young children, braved downpours and scuffles with police to cross Greece's northern border into Macedonia.

Greek border police said it as the largest single wave of refugees they had seen so far.

Despite wrapping themselves up in garbage bags of every kind, the migrants were soaked to the skin, their trainers caked with mud and hats dripping with rain.

Two men lifted a white-haired man, helping him step by step, while some parents raised their children high in the air so Macedonian police would let them through the checkpoints first.

By early afternoon, all had crossed but thousands more were on their way, heading to the Greek mainland in ferries from the country's overcrowded eastern islands. 

Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki today said Macedonia was considering building a Hungarian-style border fence to stem a rising influx of migrants.

In an interview with Hungarian business weekly Figyelo, he said Macedonia will probably also need 'some kind of a physical defence' though this would not be a long-term solution.

'But if we take seriously what Europe is asking us to do, we will need that, too. Either soldiers or a fence or a combination of the two,' said Poposki. 

Earlier, hundreds of migrants continued to pour into Hungary overnight, slipping through its flimsy border fence under the cover of darkness to avoid police.

Hungarian police captured a record 3,321 migrants yesterday, the highest daily figure so far this year, above the 3,313 detained last Thursday, data published on its website showed.

The new arrivals brought the numbers of refugees and migrants looking to move on towards western Europe from Serbia through Hungary to nearly 22,000 this month alone.  

Hungary's Interior Ministry has proposed the declaration of a 'state of crisis due to mass migration' as of September 15, based on bills passed last week, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff said on Thursday.

The proposal will be the first item to be discussed at a government meeting on September 15, Janos Lazar told a weekly news conference. 

The new bills make crossing a border fence which is under construction a criminal offence and allow authorities to fast-track the assessment of asylum applications at the border. 

Leaders of the United Nations refugee agency has warned that Hungary faces a bigger wave of 42,000 asylum seekers in the next 10 days and will need international help to provide shelter on its border. 

Officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it was sending tents, beds and thermal blankets to Hungary's border with Serbia, where frustrated groups from the Middle East and Africa have ignored police instructions to stay put and instead marched on a highway north to Budapest.  

Commissioner Antonio Guterres accused the entire European Union of failing to see the crisis coming or take co-ordinated action, even though the 28-nation bloc of 508 million people should have enough room and resources to absorb hundreds of thousands of newcomers with ease.

There was needless suffering in the migration crisis 'because Europe is not organized to deal with it, because the European asylum system has been extremely dysfunctional and in recent weeks completely chaotic,' Guterres said. 

He told a news conference in Paris that it appeared 'clear that if Europe would be properly organised, it would be a manageable crisis.'

The EU has struggled, in part, because front-line nations such as Hungary and Greece have not put enough facilities in place to house a human flow averaging 2,000 to 3,000 a day.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of people try to push deeper into Europe and seek refugee protection in Germany, the nation accepting the greatest number by far.

In Austria, about 3,700 people poured across the border from Hungary today alone, a police spokesman said, a big increase in the flow of migrants that will put extra pressure on Austrian authorities trying to arrange onward transport to Germany.   

(dailymail.co.uk)