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Thousands of refugees trapped in border ‘tug of war’

“The fact the Hungarian-Serbian border is now closed has not stopped the flow”, Orban said.

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Hungary has seized a train transporting refugees from Croatia to the border town of Magyarboly, Hungarian authorities said late Friday, lashing out at the neighboring country for allegedly failing to coordinate the move. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called the behavior of Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic “pathetic.”

Croatia staggered Thursday as thousands of asylum seekers poured in from Serbia.

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!”

It was Hungary’s completion of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia earlier this week that forced Serbia to move refugees towards Croatia.

Hungary’s decision to close its borders to Syrian refugees has intensified the growing crisis enveloping Europe.

Croatia had initially said the migrants would be welcome, but today it said it was overwhelmed and would not become a “migrant hotspot”.

In Croatia, 5,000 migrants have arrived in the country since Hungary imposed its crackdown, which included the building of a huge wall created to keep migrants out.

Hungary, which has been the transit route for over 180,000 migrants this year, has built a 3.5-meter (10-foot) fence on its frontier with Serbia and implemented a raft of immigration laws to clamp down on migration.

At the Hungarian border village of Beremend, police and soldiers at first lined up, backed with two army Humvees mounted with machine guns, to block the path of more than 10 busloads of migrants arriving at the border from Croatia. “And I’d also like to make it very clear, no matter what criticism I receive, that we will never allow such aggressive people to enter Hungary”, he added. Others are stuck in Beli Manastir, near the Hungarian border, where Croatia had the capacity to house 200 people in military barracks, reports the Times.

Tensions have been rising in Croatia as thousands of migrants wait to board trains and buses – while Ms Pusic revealed that 60 per cent of those who have been registered in Croatia are refugees and 40 per cent are economic migrants.

“What else can we do?” he said.

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Czech President Milos Zeman said refugees from Ukraine should be included in the number of migrants to be redistributed across Europe, but on a voluntary rather than mandatory basis, the Czech Press Agency reported 17 September.

Croatia expects over 20,000 migrants over next two weeks