Migrants cross the Serbia-Croatia border after being stranded

Slovenian authorities closed the border after reaching their daily quota, leaving over 1000 migrants stranded as hundreds more continue to arrive.

In response, the Slovenian parliament amended a law which would allow soldiers to join border police in patrolling the 670-kilometre frontier with Croatia. About 19,500 migrants have entered Slovenia since Friday, the Interior Ministry said, when Hungary sealed its southern border, creating bottlenecks at Balkan border crossings as migrants attempted to find new routes.

Around 1,000 were waiting to cross into Croatia at the Berkasovo checkpoint after spending the night in the cold, with dozens of tents pitched along the roadside which was turned into a mudbath after hours of heavy rain.

“Slovenia will formally ask for additional police forces to guard the border between Slovenia and Croatia and for financial help”, he said.

Latvia says it plans to erect a fence along parts of its 270-kilometer (168-mile) border with Russian Federation to prevent illegal immigration into the small Baltic country.

“I am from Hama in Syria, I have family in Turkey, I will tell them not to come as this is not for people, this is for animals”, Mustafa said as he was trying to break a piece of wood to put it in a fire.

An increasing number of migrants have been crossing into Norway from Russian Federation at the remote Arctic border post in Storskog, many on bicycles and other forms of transport because pedestrian crossings are not allowed there. “We couldn’t sleep. I came 24 hours ago and spent the night in a tent”, said Mr Azme Solei from the war-ravaged Syrian city of Homs.

The goal for many travelling is the EU’s biggest economy Germany, which expects to receive up to a million asylum requests this year.

Far more worrying, officials said, were European jihadists returning from Syria and disaffected Muslims already in the West who have been recruited by the Islamic State. On Tuesday morning, a train carrying more than 1,000 migrants from the town of Tovarnik and a few 20 buses full of migrants from the Opatovac refugee camp were headed toward the Slovenian border.

Details of the Christian Democrats’ so-called “secret plan” to stem the current 10,000 a day influx of migrants into Germany were published in the mass circulation Bild newspaper which said that the initiative was supported by 188 of Merkel’s 310 parliamentary party MPs.

In Slovenia, Šefic says, “Despite recent developments, we are still doing our best to increase our capacities, especially with regard to heated facilities, so that we can take proper care of the refugees and migrants entering our country until their potential departure for Austria”.

As winter draws near, the fate of many men, women and children hangs in the balance.

A migrant camp in Slovenia has caught fire on Wednesday; none if the migrants taking shelter in the gateway to Austria and beyond were injured in the mishap.

While the government said it was still investigating the cause, police at the scene told The Associated Press that migrants had set a stack of UNHCR-supplied blankets deliberately on fire to protest conditions in the camp on the outskirts of Brezice.