Hungary closes frontier with Croatia to stem tide of refugees

AT midnight on October 16, the Hungarian government closed all of its frontier posts with Croatia and erected razor wire fences in an attempt to stem the tide of migrants and refugees trying to reach western Europe through Hungary.

Until now, they had been allowing about 5,000 unregistered people through each day but having failed in pushing through a plan to send EU forces to close access to Greece; the Hungarian government have now taken this latest action.

As the Hungarians had previously closed their borders with Serbia, those who were caught in Croatia are now travelling by bus to Slovenia hoping to be able to continue their journeys to Austria, Germany and other EU states.

According to the BBC extra police had been deployed to the border with Croatia and Slovenia and  Slovenian interior minister Vesna Gjorkos Znidar, said that the country will keep accepting refugees as long as Austria and Germany’s borders remain open.

In other related news, on the morning of October 17, the Greek coastguard announced that four more migrants, three of them children, died attempting to cross the Aegean Sea. The children and a woman, drowned when their boat capsized near the Greek island of Kalymnos although, it added that 11 people were rescued and crews were still searching for a missing child.