News agency reports said that Croatia closed seven of its eight roads to Serbia on Thursday after 9,000 migrants flooded in over two days, shutting the land that the hordes of asylum seekers flooding into Europe had used.
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Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban says his country has started building a razor wire fence along a stretch of its border with Croatia to keep migrants from entering the country there.
The government has set up a crisis body to deal with the thousands of migrants who began transiting through Croatia after Hungary closed its border with Serbia and imposed a crackdown on migrants earlier in the week.
Meanwhile, Slovenia has been returning migrants to Croatia and has stopped all rail traffic between the two countries.
The Croatian police are collecting them along the so-called green border and taking them to the town of Tovarnik.
Terence Pike, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Croatia, told CNN that Croatian authorities had been prepared to handle only an influx of 500 migrants and refugees a day. It will receive asylum requests, but not create a “corridor” for refugees to simply pass through Slovenia into Austria.
“Croatia cannot take this burden and will not accept it while others turn their heads from it. People will not be able to remain in Croatia”. Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said the country has the situation under control.
After bus trips through Serbia, the refugees crossed fields on foot to enter Croatia, where dozens of police directed them to trains and buses heading to refugee centres.
The new wave of people arriving in Croatia was sparked by Hungary’s closure of its border with Serbia. Baton-wielding police responded with tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons, and migrants threw rocks and other objects at them.
Numerous migrants are fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Along with Britain and Ireland, Denmark is not legally bound to take part in European Union plans to spread refugees more evenly across the bloc.
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“If we understand that there is a more systemic problem across the European Union , the Commission has the possibility to recommend specific introductions”, the official said. Romania responded with alarm Thursday after Hungary said that fence would be 70 kilometres long, saying that would violate European standards. According to the Slovenian police, the people on the train will be sent to a refugee center at Postojna.
