Several thousand migrants and refugees waited at the border between Slovenia and Austria this morning, after many of them were forced to spend the night either in heated tents or in the open air. Many of them are fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Advertisement
A few people could be seen huddling beside camp fires and a cloud of smoke engulfed the area.
The Slovenian police said in the afternoon that Austria had accepted a few 7,000 people during the course of the day and that a train carrying a few 600 was on its way to cross into Austria in Jesenice, according to the Slovenian Press Agency (STA).
“Till today, it was hard to find a solution, because a series of countries adopt a stance ‘Not in my backyard, ” Tsipras said, apparently referring to the European Union countries that had refused to accept a mechanism for redistributing refugees and, instead, took unilateral steps to secure their own territories, such as Hungary’s construction of a barbed-wire border fence”.
Since Hungary sealed its borders with Serbia and Croatia on September 15 and October 17, thousands of refugees have been flowing into Slovenia daily.
He says “we have a continuous stream of people from Slovenia, but it is under control”.
Slovenia’s government had already warned it would be ready to built a fence along the border with its other neighbour Croatia if a European Union plan to reduce the movements of refugees through tighter border controls fails. Most of those arriving were from Afghanistan and Syria, and smaller numbers from Iraq, Iran, Somalis and Pakistan.
Four bodies were found and 35 people are still missing.
The service said the search for the missing migrants resumed Friday.
Germany’s vice chancellor is blasting what he describes as irresponsible bickering in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc over the migrant crisis. Merkel has argued there’s no way to instantly stop the influx. He told the Spiegel Online news portal in comments published Friday: “In view of the great challenge for our country from the high immigration of refugees, the argument…is now threatening the government’s ability to act”.
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic blamed Greece for failing to control its maritime border with Turkey, while Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras pointed to a lack of solidarity within the EU. There are fears the plan will not avert a humanitarian crisis.
Advertisement
“The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children, but [also] the very civilization of Europe”, he told parliament.
