Croatia’s Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said his country can not accept any more people.
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Croatian police said at least 5,650 migrants had come into the country since the first groups started arriving early on Wednesday.
After suddenly landing in the path of the biggest migration in Europe for decades, Croatia said on Friday it could no longer offer them refuge and would wave them onwards, challenging the European Union to find a policy to receive them.
According to wire service MTI, about 1,500 people entered Hungary on foot through the Beremend border crossing after Croatian authorities transported some 20 busloads of people to the border. “But go on. Not because we don’t like you, but because this is not your final destination”.
On Wednesday, migrants trying to cross from Serbia clashed with Hungarian police at the border crossing of Roszke. Most plan to travel on, passing through Slovenia and then Austria en route to Germany or the Scandinavian countries.
Closing Croatia’s border points is aimed at preventing a possible corridor for thousands of people to reach European Union member states; no time limit has been put on the closures.
Croatia represents a longer and more arduous route into Europe for the asylum-seekers from Syria and elsewhere fleeing violence in their homelands.
Reuters quotes him as saying he will not allow his country to be the “hotspot” of the migrant crisis.
“We can also see from the analyses…that this action was directed in Arabic and English, from loudspeakers, with organised media background”, Orban added.
Scuffles broke out in two locations on the border with Serbia on Thursday after people were left waiting for hours for transport further north.
The country stopped rail traffic coming from the south after finding 150 migrants on a Zurich-bound train.
However, in a somewhat contradictory move, Croatia closed its border with Serbia last night – though, ultimately, it did not stop refugees from streaming through.
“We will not and cannot keep them [refugees] in Croatia and no one will make us do that”, he said.
In the town of Beli Manastir, near the border with Hungary, migrants slept on streets, on train tracks and at a local gas station.
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Police were also deployed in a suburb of the capital Zagreb, taking up positions around a hotel housing hundreds of migrants, some of them on balconies shouting “Freedom! Two hundred police have been assigned to the Croatian border”, he said.
