First migrants enter Croatia after Hungary seals border

Overwhelmingly, they want to go to Germany or Sweden.

“It is the responsibility of the entire European Union“, Merkel said.

He said that the problem can be solved only with the cooperation of Hungary.

The Eurozone crisis and the prospect of British exit both pose huge challenges to the EU.

Austria is also preparing for the possibility of losing the Hungarian buffer.

“It was really bad last night”, said Bashir, a 17-year-old Afghan schoolboy who had arrived an hour after the border closed.

Local volunteers handing out food and supplies said a couple of hundred people crossed through there Monday.

Leaders of Germany and Austria, two countries that have accepted the most refugees, called for another emergency European Union summit next week to address the issue.

Around 200,000 refugees and migrants have crossed into Hungary this year; many of them are among of the more than 4 million people who have fled violence in Syria since 2011.

Hungary has already blocked its border with Serbia by building a 175-kilometer razor wire fence, to stop migrants coming from South-Eastern Europe in their way to Western Europe.

On Tuesday morning, the area was a major highway and the main border crossing between Hungary and Serbia, now it is completely shut and an officer said it’s the “property of the border police” and journalists are not permitted.

Germany has said it expects 800,000 people to claim asylum there this year.

It would allow the government to mobilize the army – pending parliamentary approval next week – to help police with border control, and force courts to prioritize cases involving migrants caught entering Hungary illegally.

Croatia’s intervention follows Hungary’s crackdown on refugees and the sealing of its border with Serbia.

“Time is running out”, Merkel warned, urging an end to the squabbling that has grown more acrimonious since eastern members flatly refused to accept EU-set quotas for taking in refugees.

Long traffic jams built up on the Germany-Austria border and refugees were left stranded on non-EU Serbia’s side of the frontier with Hungary in the latest chaotic scenes from the biggest such crisis since World War II. “Serbia can not handle this”. “It’s going to be just as much a struggle as it has been for Macedonia and Greece“. One refugee told The Guardian, “We’ve travelled so far, thousands of kilometers, and now they’re closing the borders”. “How are we supposed to live with no future?”

She added: “If we start having to apologise for showing a friendly face in emergencies, then that isn’t my country“.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, however, describes the majority of people arriving in Europe this year as refugees.