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The mood was grim and confused, with many seemingly in denial that this muddy field is where their onward journey ends, far from the better lives they dreamed of in more prosperous European countries such as Germany.

“I don’t know anything,” said 17-year-old Ahmed Merza from Qamishli in Syria, who has been in Idomeni for eight days with his sister. “This is bad news for us — like a bomb.”

Like thousands around him, Merza wanted to go to Germany. “I’m sad,” he said, sheltering from the rain beneath a tree. He didn’t consider staying in Greece to be a viable option, saying that “Greece is a poor country, for us and for the people.”

For others, the conditions were just too much to bear, and about 200 people boarded buses bound south for refugee camps in and around Athens or other parts of Greece. Greek officials have said they will not evacuate the camp by force.

“This is horrible, unbelievable, unbearable. There is war in my country, and they are closing the border,” said Mahmoud Hassan, a 23-year-old Syrian. “Where are we supposed to go? Please if you can do anything — help us. The situation is very, very terrible.”

On the island of Lesbos, at least 25 boats filled with migrants made landfall since the accord reached in Brussels on Tuesday that would clear the way for Europe to send migrants back to Turkey en masse.

The accord also seeks to deal a crippling blow to smuggling networks that have funneled more than 1 million people into Greece over the past year.

On Lesbos’s main port, Mytilene, about 4,200 migrants waited in camps for a possible onward trip to the Greek mainland.

“These people are desperate and more and more anxious now,” Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the U.N.’s refugee agency at the Greek-Macedonian border, said in a phone interview.

“The conditions are bad, they are not livable, not human. This is going to bring more chaos, more misery.”

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Amer Cohadzic in Idomeni contributed.