Julian Robinson, Flora Drury and John Hall — Daily Mail Online Oct 18, 2015
Migrant Afghan and Syrians cram onto train to Croatian capitol on Saturday Oct 18. Click to enlarge
Bloody violence has broken out between Syrian and Afghan migrants this afternoon after they were seen fighting to board trains across Croatia.
Rocks, smashed glass bottles and sticks were used as violence broke out at the Beli Manastir train station in the northeast of the country.
A number of migrants were injured during the clashes while police officers used batons as they tried to break up the fight, which started at the ticket office.
Migrant injured after clash. Click to enlarge
The chaotic scenes unfolded as Hungary continued to build a giant fence along the Croatian border – just days after sealing off access from Serbia with a 100 mile razor-wire barrier.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said a ‘fast-solution’ fence will be finished on a 26 mile stretch of the border – where the two countries are not divided by a river – by the end of today.
Hundreds of Hungarian troops are being called in to help build the barrier just days after the country erected a huge fence along its border with Serbia.
Migrants on the Hungarian-Croatian border. Click to enlarge
Migrants continued to stream in from Serbia in to Croatia this morning, walking through fields around one of seven road border crossings that Zagreb closed after an influx of more than 14,000 people in just two days.
Croatia’s Prime Minister said today that border guards will redirect migrants to Hungary and Slovenia – an announcement the Hungarian government described as ‘totally unacceptable’ as a war of words erupted this afternoon.
There have been reports that Croatia has already started transporting thousands of migrants and refugees to its northeastern frontier with Hungary, with at least two coachloads crossing the frontier.
Some 22 buses arrived at the border opposite the Hungarian village Beremend, each carrying around 60 people. There they were met by around 200 Hungarian police and 50 soldiers, who allowed two of the buses to cross the frontier, witnesses said.
After crossing, the passengers disembarked and were transferred into Hungarian buses which set off for an unknown destination.
It comes as the UN refugee agency warned of a ‘buildup’ of migrants and refugees in Serbia as its neighbors tighten their borders to the influx.
Tensions boiled over among some migrants in the Croatian town of Beli Manastir, just over the border from Hungary, angry groups of Afghan and Syrian migrants, waiting for trains to Zagreb, fought with rocks and sticks at a ticket office.
Rocks, smashed bottles and broken sticks littered the ground while a handful of police in ordinary uniforms tried to restore control.
At the Tovarnik railway station, around 3,000 migrants waited for buses and trains in the heat, women and children searching for shade under sparse trees.
Announcing the construction of the a razor wire fence along part of the Croatian border, Orban said this morning: ‘During the night work already began on building the technical border closure… It seems we can rely on help from no one.
‘The western Balkans route is still there. The fact the Hungarian-Serbian border is now closed has not stopped the flow.’
Adrian Edwards of UNHCR says ‘the crisis is growing and being pushed from one country to another’ as roughly 4,000 migrants and refugees pour into Greece each day and head north.
He says stricter border controls first by Hungary and more recently Croatia threaten a bottleneck in Serbia, ‘which is not a country with a robust asylum system.’
Edwards said: ‘You aren’t going to solve these problems by closing borders.’
New figures show that nearly 474,000 have so far crossed the Mediterranean to get to Europe this year. Click to enlarge
UNHCR says more than 442,440 people have crossed the Mediterranean this year, and 2,921 have died trying. But the International Organization for Migration puts those figures at 473,887 and 2,812, respectively.
In Turkey, several hundred migrants who have been blocked by police in the northwest from crossing overland into Greece drew closer to the border today after the authorities briefly opened the route.
From their makeshift camp on the outskirts of the border city of Edirne the migrants – mostly Syrian refugees – began walking in the direction of the city centre, beyond which lies the road to Greece. But less than two hours later they came to a halt, after the police erected a new cordon just outside Edirne.
Encouraged by the #Crossingnomore social media campaign, which called for migrants to be allowed to travel safely overland to Greece rather than risk their lives at sea, up to 1,000 refugees had flocked to the city since Monday.
But on Tuesday police sealed off the main road into the city from the east and sealed off access to the bus station, preventing migrants arriving from other Turkish cities by bus from continuing their journey westwards.