Migrants keep sneaking through Hungary’s razor-wire fence

The new laws make it a criminal offence, punishable by prison or deportation, to damage Hungary’s newly erected border defences.

The migrants were being registered at a border crossing at Tovarnik on Wednesday, a Croatian interior ministry spokeswoman said.

The unrest left 14 Hungarian police officers injured, the authorities said.

The move was in response to fears that refugees now streaming into Austria from Hungary could try to cross into the country over those borders in large numbers. “We want them to apply international rules under which they have obligations to these people“.

“We will repair the fence, in fact we will put up a stronger fence“, he told a news conference.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was “shocked” by the “unacceptable” treatment of migrants. One asked a passing reporter: “Is this the way to Budapest?”

At around 15:00 CET, refugees from the Middle East broke through a fence at Horgos 2, and then clashed with the Hungarian police. Anyone trying to sneak through would face jail. The re-imposition of controls departs from an effort over the past 20 years to relax restrictions and open Europe’s internal borders under what is known as the Schengen agreement. Before that, some women had pushed to the front of the crowd holding small babies and children above their heads as they faced police in an obvious appeal for mercy, but no one made it through.

“We are ready to accept and direct those people – their religion and skin colour is completely irrelevant – to where they apparently wish to go…”

A migrant family are pictured in a bus as they enter in the Jezevo refugee camp near Zagreb on Septe … But with Hungary’s right wing, anti-immigration government shutting down its southern border, those refugees now have to go through Croatia.

“The fact is the migrants keep coming”.

“We would like to be part of the solution to the problem, but this can’t be to our detriment”, he said.

But his Slovakian counterpart Robert Fico added to the war of words between EU capitals by warning Europe was at risk from what he called a “migrant onslaught”.

Hungary has said that migrants whose asylum applications it rejects will be returned to Serbia.

From the Alps to Istanbul, thousands of other migrants were caught in similar bottlenecks, with hundreds setting out to walk to Germany from the Austrian border city of Salzburg after trains north were suspended.

Hundreds of refugees stranded on the Serbian Hungarian border are now desperately searching for an alternative route into the European Union.

In Belgrade, the informal transit camp next to the city’s main bus station is quieter than it has been for weeks, with just a scattering of tents in the park. The country has notified the European Commission about the plan, which is allowed in a crisis situation under a clause in the EU’s Schengen agreement.

Police say the controls, in effect since early Wednesday, may be extended to 10 crossings, with vehicles being stopped selectively for checks of passports and other travel documents.

Werner Faymann said in an interview with public radio Oe1.