Croatia is the new route of choice for western Europe-bound refugees after Hungary sealed its Serbian border Wednesday Sep 16,2015

 

About 5,650 refugees have entered Croatia from Serbia over the past 24 hours after Hungary sealed its border with a razor wire fence guarded by riot police armed with tear gas and water cannon

Hungary faces worldwide condemnation for using tear gas to disperse crowds at its border, with Serbia's prime minister Aleksandar Vucic accusing the country of 'brutal' and 'non-European' behaviour   

New arrivals are entering the EU member state via its eastern border, which has become the route of choice for those hoping to reach western Europe.

Thanks to its close proximity to the Serbia, thousands of migrants are expected to pass over the Croatia-Hungary border in the coming days, despite the fact it was heavily mined during the Balkans War in the 1990s and remains incredibly dangerous.

Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic said late that the country was prepared for the arrival of migrants but could not cope if the numbers increased dramatically.

'We are ready to (provide) asylum to a few thousand people and we can handle that, but we are not ready for tens of thousands,' Pusic told HRT.

'We do not have capacities' for such an influx, she added

“Croatia will not be able to receive more people,” Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic told reporters in Tovarnik. 

He added that Croatia would not simply let refugees head north to Slovenia, which is part of the EU’s Schengen zone of border-free travel.

Amid chaotic scenes at its border with Serbia, Croatia said on Thursday Sep 17,2015 it could not cope with a flood of refugees seeking a new route into the EU after Hungary kept them out by erecting a fence and using tear gas and water cannon against them.

Croatia,the European Union’s newest member state said it may try to stop taking in refugees, just as the 28-nation bloc announced it leaders would hold an emergency summit on September 23,2015 to try to resolve the migration crisis, which has deeply divided it.

More than 7,300 people entered Croatia from Serbia in the 24 hours after Wednesday’s clashes between Hungarian riot police and stone-throwing refugees at its Balkan neighbour’s frontier.

At the eastern border town of Tovarnik, Croatian riot police struggled to keep crowds of men, women and children back from rail tracks after long queues formed in baking heat for buses bound for reception centres elsewhere in Croatia.

Police were also deployed in a suburb of the capital Zagreb, taking up positions around a hotel housing hundreds of refugees, some of them on balconies shouting “Freedom! Freedom!”. Others threw rolls of toilet paper from the balconies and windows.