Migrants pushed towards Slovenia after Hungary closes Croatia border

(Vatican Radio) Migrants fleeing war and poverty are streaming into the small Alpine nation of Slovenia, after Hungary closed its border with Croatia to them.

Then out of the darkness a few migrants appear, walking in a single file as they are escorted by Croatian police toward Hungary.

“We are waiting here 4 hours on the bus”, said Muhammad Samin from Afghanistan. Where they go from Zakany remains to be seen. The Turkish coastguard recovered the bodies from the wooden boat, which had sailed from northwest Turkey’s seaside town of Ayvalik for the Greek island of Lesbos.

There was no immediate information of the nationalities of the migrants.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to travel to Turkey on Sunday for talks on the refugee crisis with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Amnesty said the European Union should be looking for ways to “offer safe and legal routes to refugees to reach Europe”.

Meanwhile, a desperate European Union is trying to control the influx of the refugees from Turkey.

Later on Saturday, a special train with about 1,200 migrants on board arrived at the Sredisce ob Dravi crossing, guarded by more than 100 policemen, said an AFP correspondent at the scene.

“Hungary is determined to defend, by all means, its own and Europe’s borders”, government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told reporters Saturday in Nagykanizsa, western Hungary.

Croatia began directing migrants west to Slovenia, which said a few 300 had arrived and would be registered before continuing their journey to Austria and Germany, the preferred destination of the vast majority, many of them Syrians fleeing war. Several hundred people have come so far, with more expected today.

“There is no way Croatia can cope with … accommodating and providing for the immediate needs for these people”, said Lydia Gall, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Budapest.

Slovenia has cancelled all rail traffic with Croatia so that migrants are not able to enter the country by train. Croatian police said more than 5,000 migran…

But Slovenian authorities said they planned to limit the influx to around 2,500 per day in line with the country’s capacity to register and accommodate them.

The closure could leave thousands stranded in Croatia and further east and south in Serbia and Macedonia.

Despite the ensuing chaos in neighbouring countries Hungarian rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has defended his government’s decision to declare Hungary’s southern frontier with Croatia off-limits to arriving migrants.

The flow shifted to Slovenia after Hungary sealed its border with Croatia for migrants shortly after midnight on Friday.