Hungary detains 29 asylum seekers, including ‘identified terrorist’ in border

Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said on Tuesday that 277 migrants had so far entered Croatia from Serbia following Hungary’s border closure.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the razor-wire fence that the country completed along the Serbian border would be extended for “a reasonable distance” along the border with Romania.

“These people … don’t want to come to Croatia or Hungary either and that is why I don’t understand where the problem is of letting them pass through”, he said.

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

One man who fled Syria told The Guardian he was turned away at the Hungarian border; he is now headed toward a Serbian town near Croatia.

To travel freely through the Schengen Area, you have to be registered in the first member country you enter.

Tensions escalated as refugees and migrants, most still desperate to reach Germany, were stranded in Serbia as Hungary intensified its crackdown at the border, which included a reinforced, 13-foot-high, 109-mile barbed-wire fence and police in riot gear standing guard.

“It is very dangerous – there are more than 50,000 mines, but they do not know about that”, Daniel Szatmary, a volunteer with international Relationship for Peace, which provides food and water to migrants in Southern Hungary, told the Daily Telegraph.

To avoid Hungary by land, migrants would have to go from Croatia into Slovenia before reaching Austria and then Germany, the ultimate destination of most of the migrants.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic on September 16 called for a meeting of the country’s security council to discuss the migrant issue.

Migrants are opening a new route into the European Union after Hungary tightened border controls and enacted tough new laws designed to keep people outside its borders.

Romania opposes the European Commission’s proposal for mandatory refugee quotas, saying that it will not take in more than 1,785 refugees and migrants.

Earlier this week, Germany and the Czech Republic began policing their borders with Austria.

“The Greek islands continue to be under an intense migratory pressure”.

The coast guard said Wednesday it rescued 773 people in 19 separate search-and-rescue operations in the last 24 hours off the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Rhodes.