Slovenia Blocks Migrants At Border

Thousands were stranded in Serbia and Croatia Sunday after Hungary closed its border with Croatia pushing the flow to a much slower route via Slovenia.

In a bid to stem the influx, Hungary sealed its Croatian border with a razor-wire fence early Saturday, barely a month after it shut its frontier with Serbia.

Slovenia, which says it can handle 2,500 people a day, has denounced Croatia for sending larger groups into the tiny Alpine country.

On Saturday a few 3,000 migrants and refugees crossed the border from Croatia.

The road leading from Serbia into Croatia testified to the treacherous conditions the migrants have endured since Croatian police stalled the flow here.

According to the ministry, while a great majority of refugees and migrants - who are mostly from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq - are heading to Austria, four people have applied for asylum in Slovenia.

Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told national news agency MTI that the government had information that migrants had started to be shipped to Slovenia's border with Hungary, which he said made the measure necessary.

The arrival of a projected 700,000 migrants this year to Europe's shores, fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia by boat and dinghy across the Mediterranean and Aegean, has exposed deep and often ugly divisions in the EU.

However, Slovenian media report this morning that Austria had again begun to accept refugees, reports Index.hr and Vecernji List on October 19, 2015. Later a train carrying around 1,200 refugees entered Slovenia at the border crossing in Sredisce ob Dravi, while another 600 were transported by bus to border crossings in Mursko Sredisce and Macelj.

Several thousand refugees got stranded on Sunday in Serbia and Croatia in foggy and cold weather, after Hungary closed its border with both countries.

"People were fighting last night for a tent; we were sitting under blankets and we are now wet and cold", said an Iraqi man called Idris, waiting in the rain to enter Croatia from Serbia.

A new train with 2,100 migrants is expected to arrive in Cakovec on Monday - a town "that has not capacity to accept so many people".

Following the closure of the Serbian border, migrants headed towards Croatia before crossing the Hungarian border in the thousands every day.

She offered Turkey the prospect of support for faster progress on its bid to join the European Union in return for cooperation in stemming the flow of migrants and taking back those rejected by Europe. The country has since denied this and stated that it will continue receiving 1500 migrants per day.

About 5,000 migrants spent a cold night in a transit camp in Opatovac, eastern Croatia. The United Kingdom and France agreed in August to set up a joint command center to stop illegal migrants trying to enter the United Kingdom through the Channel Tunnel by boarding trucks and trains. At one point during the summer, hundreds of migrants, who live by the thousands in shanty camps in Calais, tried to rush the boarding area at once.