The Guardian added that the government had amended the country’s defence law early on Wednesday to allow soldiers to join border police in patrolling the 670-kilometre border with Croatia, and said it would ask for financial backup from the European Union to deal with numbers that have “exceeded all manageable possibilities”.
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The latest report by Amnesty global (AI) said hundreds of men, women, children and babies as young as one month old traipsed through the rain to reach a border only to find it blocked by a fence and Slovenian police.
Over 3,100 people have died making the crossing this year, the IOM said.
Croatia has been sending migrants to the border with Slovenia since Saturday, when Hungary blocked passage to migrants from Croatia with a border fence protected by razor wire, soldiers and police patrols.
All in all, more than 20,000 refugees have crossed the Slovenian border over the past few days, due to the closing of the route from Croatia through Hungary.
More than 600,000 migrants and refugees, mainly fleeing violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have braved the risky journey to Europe so far this year. More than 500,000 people have arrived so far this year on Greece’s eastern islands, paying smugglers to ferry them across from nearby Turkey.
The leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia will meet in Brussels Sunday with their counterparts from non-EU states Macedonia and Serbia, the office of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said. They disembarked at Pireaus port where they were bussed out to a central train station. Justice Minister Anders Anundsen highlighted the increased flow of people seeking to enter Norway through the remote Arctic border post in Storskog, many of whom arrive on bicycles because pedestrian crossings are not permitted there.
Tents have been torched at a transit camp in Slovenia, allegedly by migrants angry at how they are being treated.
Attempts by Slovenia to stem the flow of migrants since Hungary sealed its border with Croatia on Friday have triggered a knock-on effect through the Balkans, with thousands held up at border crossings.
In the meantime, Frontex, the EU’s border agency, said member states had provided less than half of the 775 personnel it had requested to help in Greece and Italy. Slovene officers bursts of pepper spray failed to stop them, but Austrian police erected physical barriers that blocked the interlopers path to buses.
Many others live in extreme cold conditions at a refugee camp in Opatovac in the east of Croatia.
Officials in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia all accused each other of making a bad situation worse.
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Guy Delauney at Rigonce, on the Slovenia-Croatia border, and Nick Thorpe at Sentilj, on the Slovenia-Austria border, look at the experience of migrants in the south and north of Slovenia. At least 6,000 spent the last night in Slovenia which provided them with shelter in refugee centers. He said there are children among the passengers, but authorities haven’t established where the boats came from.
