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At least 13 refugees have been killed after a boat on its way to Greece collided with a ferry off the coast of Turkey, reports say.

Greek coastguard spokesman Nikos Lagkadianos said 11 people were rescued from the boat that sank and a twelfth swam ashore in the early hours. The survivors say there were a total of 46 people on board.

Several hundred asylum-seekers are camping out at the Turkish border with Greece, hoping that a meeting in Brussels will produce an agreement to let them into the European Union.

UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said: “This may be the last opportunity for a coherent European response to manage a crisis that is increasing suffering and exploitation of refugees and migrants and tension between countries”.

Ms Fleming said it is “essential” that the 120,000 additional places are approved this week for any relocation programme to be considered “credible” but claimed that any scheme can not be effectively implemented without the creation of “adequate...

European interior ministers return to the table in Brussels on Tuesday afternoon for another round of talks on the deeply divisive issue of migration quotas. After last week’s meeting, Luxembourg’s Jean Asselborn, who is minister for immigration and asylum as well as...

The border controls went into force late on Wednesday on the motorway connecting the Czech Republic to the eastern German state of Saxony, spokesman Christian Meinhold said.

He subsequently granted the Hungarian army additional powers to deal with the crisis. “Hungary will not allow illegal immigrants to cross its territory”, the advertisement said in both English and Arabic.

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.

Some, like the now infamous photograph of Syrian man Laith Majid in tears clutching his two children just off the Greek Island of Kos, have ended happily.

On Thursday, Croatia shut seven of eight road border crossings with Serbia after more than 11,000 refugees overwhelmed the frontier over the past two days.

President Barack Obama has ordered his administration to prepare for at least 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, the White House said on Thursday.

Citing security concerns, Austria partially shut a highway linking Vienna and Hungary on Friday.

Late on Thursday Croatian officials announced they were closing roads leading to seven border crossings with Serbia.

Croatia says that seven of its eight borders with Serbia have been blocked.