Hungary erected a steel gate and fence posts at a border crossing with Croatia yesterday, moving to seal a route used by its southern neighbour to offload thousands of migrants, a Reuters cameraman said.
Croatia has sent dozens of buses packed with migrants through the Baranjsko Petrovo Selo-Beremend crossing since they began streaming over its eastern border with Serbia five days ago.
More still have crossed by train, boarded by hundreds in chaotic scenes repeated yesterday when rain-soaked migrants climbed through carriage windows at the Croatian border station of Tovarnik.
Hungary has barred their entry into the European Union via its border with Serbia with a metal fence and a raft of strict asylum rules, forcing them west into Croatia. Fast losing control over an influx of some 25,000 migrants, Croatia – the EU’s newest member – has taken to sending them north by bus and train across its own border with Hungary, which has waved them on to Austria.
The move has triggered angry exchanges between Zagreb and Budapest indicative of the disarray in Europe over the massive migration of people westwards.
Hungary, which says it is defending Europe’s “Christian identity” from hundreds of thousands of mainly Muslim migrants reaching its shores, says it is completing another fence on a 41 kilometre stretch of its frontier with Croatia to keep them out. A Reuters cameraman on the Croatian side of the border saw construction crews and soldiers erecting a gate and driving fence posts some three metres high into the ground, suggesting they were close to sealing the Beremend crossing.
Construction crews, soldiers driving fence posts some three metres high into the ground
More migrant buses were on their way from the nearby Croatian town of Beli Manastir. Further south, on Croatia’s border with Serbia, a packed train left the town of Tovarnik amid desperate scenes of migrants running and fighting to board, and small children plucked from the crowd by startled and overwhelmed police. After several hot days, the temperature dropped overnight and it started to rain yesterday.
“I’m desperate,” said 32-year-old Amina, travelling with two children from Baquba in Iraq. “It was cold overnight and now it’s raining and the children will get sick,” she said. “The police say they will board women and children first, but I didn’t manage. I lost our bag the day before yesterday and now we have no belongings at all”
Meanwhile on another front, 13 migrants, including six children, died when their boat was wrecked in Turkish waters, a Turkish coastguard source said yesterday. It was believed to be the same incident as one reported by Greek authorities early yesterday, in which an inflatable carrying 46 people towards the Greek island of Lesbos collided with a cargo vessel and capsized.
Six of those killed were children and 20 people were rescued, the Turkish source said. Late yesterday rescue teams were still searching for 13 people who went missing. Seven of those rescued were receiving treatment. Their nationalities were not immediately known.
Rescues and sinkings occur almost daily in the often choppy seas off Greece's eastern islands. Tens of thousands of mainly Syrian refugees have braved the short crossing from Turkey this year, mainly in flimsy and overcrowded inflatable boats.