April 27 (SeeNews) - Protesters supporting former prime minister and conservative party leader Nikola Gruevski broke into Macedonia's parliament following the election of ethnic Albanian Talat Xhaferi for parliament speaker, videos published by local media showed on Thursday night.
According to broadcaster Alsat-M, opposition SDSM leader Zoran Zaev, Movement for Reforms leader Ziadin Sela, and SDSM deputies Damian Mancevski and Radmila Sekerinska, and six journalists were lightly injured in the attack.
MPs blocked in the parliament are being evacuated, the interior ministry reported.
Commenting on the attack in a Facebook post, VMRO-DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski, who is on a visit to Vienna, called for calm and for a peaceful solution to the crisis.
EU high representative Federica Mogherini and enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn too urged restraint and condemned the attack "in strongest terms".
"The acts of violence in the Parliament are wholly unacceptable," they said in a joint statement, adding that they approve the election of Talat Xhaferi as a parliament speaker.
Macedonia has been locked in a political crisis since January 2015, when Zaev accused the coalition government led by VMRO-DPMNE of corruption, illegal wiretapping of more than 20,000 people and covering-up a murder. Early elections held in December as part of an EU-brokered deal have failed resolve the crisis and no government has been formed so far.