Nearly every country in Europe has become affected by the crisis as Sweden reported more than 1,000 new arrivals daily, with 5,214 people applying for asylum in the seven days to Tuesday.
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Migrants have begun streaming into Croatia from Serbia through farmland around a closed border crossing.
The European Union is split over how to cope with the influx of thousands of people mostly fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Hungary started building another razor-wire fence overnight, this time along a stretch of its border with Croatia to keep refugees from entering the country there. More than 2,000 migrants are stuck in the Croatian border town of Tovarnik, near Serbia, sleeping on station platforms or in the street.
Earlier this week Orban said Hungary might erect a fence along its border with Romania, bringing a stinging reaction from Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta. Hungary is apparently directing them to Austria, which also tightened border controls this week and added troops to check documents of those entering the country.
About 100 people have already crossed into Slovenia from Croatia and were being held at a makeshift processing centre in the border town of Brežice. Milanović said. “You are welcome in Croatia and you can pass through Croatia”.
The Economist reports that Germany has done a U-turn after initially opening its borders freely for all asylum seekers to cross.
Hungary’s foreign ministry has demanded information from Croatia, calling it a lie that some agreement had been reached by the Hungarian and Croatian interior ministers as Croatian police claimed. Only the Bajakovo crossing between Croatia and Serbia remains, which is on the Belgrade-Zagreb highway and needed for traffic.
However the migrant crisis has seen an informal relaxation in those rules.
It has closed its rail service to Croatia. Slovenia’s Prime Minister Miro Cerar said there was never a deal of any kind regarding a corridor for the refugees between the two countries.
But many migrants and refugees wish to continue on to Germany and Austria. He said this showed that this was no longer simply an immigration problem, but “threat, danger and terrorism”.
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The family – a father, a mother and their two children – were Melkite Greek Catholics with close ties to the Catholic Church.
