Greek soldiers and riot police officers stand stand amid clouds of tear gas at the Greece-Turkey border during clashes between migrants and riot police in the village of Kastanies on March 7, 2020.

Teargas and smoke bombs clouded a Greek-Turkish land border on Saturday in a fresh flare-up in tensions over migrants seeking access to European Union territory.

A Reuters correspondent in the area said the projectiles were coming from Turkish territory and being fired towards Greek police near the crossing at Kastanies. Some tear gas was also being fired by Greek police.

Meanwhile hundreds of people could be seen on the Turkish side of the high perimeter fence, with some pushing at it.

Thousands of migrants have been trying to get into Greece, an EU member state, since Turkey said on Feb. 28 it would no longer try to keep them on its territory as agreed in 2016 with the EU in return for billions of euros in aid.

Turkey argued it could no longer contain the hundreds of thousands of migrants it hosts, or the likelihood of more refugees on the way from intensified fighting in northwestern Syria, but Greece has sought to keep out the fresh influx.

Greek soldiers and riot police have been manning the borderland, as thousands of migrants have made a rush for the frontier in recent days. Their Turkish counterparts have been stationed on the other side.

Greek officials say authorities have thwarted thousands of attempts by migrants to cross in the past eight days. Over a 24-hour period by Saturday morning, there were more than 1,200 attempts to cross and 27 arrests, a government source said. Most of the migrants were from Afghanistan and Pakistan.