Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said that more than 17,000 migrants had arrived since Wednesday morning and that 3000 had now crossed into Hungary.
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“Croatia will close its border with Serbia if we witness again 8,000 migrants entering the country in one day”, he said.
“We can not register and accommodate these people any longer”, Milanovic said at a news conference.
UNHCR Spokesman, Babar Baloch: “What can solve this problem (is) Europe coming together, countries should stop tossing up these refugees, closing one border then them reappearing at a different border point, they need to have a European solution”.
Around 150 migrants spent hours overnight stranded at the Dobova railway station on Slovenia’s side of the border.
His ministry reported Thursday that 6,200 refugees and migrants had entered the country since early Wednesday.
A Serbian cabinet minister has warned that his government could take neighbouring Croatia to the worldwide courts over Zagreb’s decision to effectively shut down the Croatian border with Serbia, Croatian state news agency HINA reports. Hungary is expected to extend its barrier so it blocks access from Romania, as well as from Serbia.
Numerous refugees are attempting to make their way to richer Western Europe – including Germany and the United Kingdom – via Croatia and Hungary.
Police were also deployed in a suburb of the capital Zagreb, taking up positions around a hotel housing hundreds of refugees, some of them on balconies shouting “Freedom!” The German migration office reportedly has a backlog of more than 250,000 asylum applications, some filed as far back as a year ago, and it expects to receive 1 million more this year.
Health Minister Sinisa Varga said Croatia expects an influx of more than 20,000 migrants during the next two weeks.
The Hungarian authorities have sent buses to pick them and take them to registration facilities at Vamosszabadi near the Slovak border or Szentgotthard by the Austrian border, Hungarian National Police Force spokesperson Viktoria Csiszer-Kovacs said.
The controls are legal under Europe’s Schengen agreement, which allows free travel throughout the majority of the European Union , and they will only be temporary to handle the refugee crisis. Baton-wielding riot police also used tear gas and water cannons on migrants after a group tried to break through a gate on the Hungary-Serbia border.
“The police beat him, they punched him in the chest”.
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Asked by Phillips where he was hoping to get to, Sarmad, an Iraqi refugee waiting in the line, said he didn’t even know.
