Croatia Closes Border Crossings With Serbia After Refugee Influx

Numerous refugees and migrants entering Croatia try to move on to Slovenia, but the authorities there have been sending them back and have stopped all rail traffic between the two countries.

On Sunday, Germany imposed temporary border controls with Austria “to bring some order to the entry of refugees“, after thousands arrived in Munich.

Do you think Britain has a responsibility to these refugees?

Mohamed Bader, who fled Aleppo, Syria, sold his father’s shop to raise $10,000 for the journey with family, among them women and children.

Croatia declared it was overwhelmed and began busing migrants in convoys back to Hungary and closing its border crossings with Serbia.

Around 150 migrants spent hours overnight stranded at the Dobova railway station on Slovenia’s side of the border.

Early Thursday hundreds of migrants remained at the two border crossings, but their numbers dwindled as many of them headed toward the Croatian border. Lots of people I know have gone to places where the people are collecting on the borders or here in Zagreb, said Janet Tuskan who also runs a charity shop in the capital.

Croatia can’t care for and satisfy the needs of so many people, she said, calling for tougher surveillance across state borders.

Meanwhile, Zoran Milanovic, the country’s prime minister, said that Croatia’s resources were limited.

Croatia’s interior minister Ranko Ostojic suggested that the country will not create a corridor for refugees to pass through and they will have to claim asylum there, or be considered illegal migrants.

The bloc is bitterly split over how to fairly distribute the migrants across the European Union , and there are fears that Europe’s vaunted Schengen agreement, which allows borderless travel between member states, could be in jeopardy.

This leaves only one out of eight crossings on the Croatian-Serbia border operational, the Croatian Interior Ministry said on Thursday, adding that the measure is temporary.

There they were met by Hungarian security forces, in an area where the army has been tasked with extending the border fence.

Many are Syrians and Iraqis fleeing war, who are seeking safety and prosperity in Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe.

Around 9,000 migrants poured in from Serbia in a single day after Wednesday’s clashes between migrants and refugees and Hungarian riot police. “It is down to the Croatian government how it deals with this”, said Kapic.

German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a newspaper interview that Germany, Austria, Sweden and Italy can not bear all the burden of migrants coming to Europe, but some countries, mostly in eastern Europe, have opposed consensus on the distribution of migrants according to pre-determined quotas.