Hungary-Serbia Border Fencing Comleted Saturday August 29,2015

A razor-wire barrier along Hungary's border with non-EU member Serbia, aimed at keeping out migrants, has been completed, the Hungarian defence ministry said on Saturday August 29,2015

"Two days before the August 31,2015 deadline, the first section of the border closure has been completed," the ministry said in a statement

The barrier consisting of three rolls of razor wire along the 175-kilometre frontier is however failing to prevent people getting across

A four-metre-high (13-foot) fence is due to follow and is already being built by the Hungarian army which will "also provide a defence against illegal border-crossers," the defence ministry said.

Around 1,000 border police currently control the border, and 2,000 more are due to be in operation from September 1, 2015 the government says.

Hungary, a member of the European Union and of the visa-free Schengen zone, has this year intercepted more than 140,000 migrants entering from Serbia.

The vast majority have trekked up through the western Balkans and want to travel onwards to western European countries like Germany and Sweden.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban's right-wing government has been criticised by Brussels for building the barrier, which it announced in June it would construct.

Hungarian police positioned nearby watch as Syrian migrants climb under a fence to enter Hungary at the Hungarian-Serbian border near Roszke, Hungary

 

Migrants stand on the Serbian side of the fence near a Hungarian police officer near the Hungarian village of Asotthalom on August 27, 2015

 

Hungarian police inspect a barbed wire fence on the border with Serbia, in Roszke, Hungary, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2015

 Hungarian soldiers build a fence on the Hungarian - Serbian border near Asotthalom, Hungary on Monday Aug. 10, 2015