More Refugees into Europe

Local Editor

Some 4,000 migrants have entered Croatia from Serbia in the past 24 hours after Hungary sealed its border, national state-run HRT television reported on Thursday.

New migrants were continuing to enter the European Union [EU] member on its eastern border, which became their new route on the journey to Western Europe, the Croatian channel reported.

A special train transporting some 800 migrants from Tovarnik, near the Serbian border, arrived in Dugo Selo, near Zagreb.

The migrants were being transferred to a reception center in nearby Jezevo.

Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic said late Wednesday 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.

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic was to hold talks in Zagreb later Thursday with his Austrian counterpart, Chancellor Werner Faymann. Milanovic would then travel to Ljubljana to meet Slovenian premier Miro Cerar, his office said.

Meanwhile, the number of refugees who entered Germany on Wednesday more than doubled to 7266, a federal police spokeswoman said on Thursday.

"Most of them were picked up when crossing the German-Austrian border", spokeswoman Judith Toelle said, adding that on Tuesday police had stopped 3,442 migrants.

In Paris, authorities started evacuating more than 500 Syrian and other migrants from tent camps and moving them to special housing as the country steps up efforts to deal with Europe's migrant wave.

City social workers and charity workers woke the migrants before dawn Thursday, and they gathered their belongings calmly, watched over by police.

The operations took place at a large camp near the Gare d'Austerlitz train station in southeast Paris, and another in the 18th arrondissement of northern Paris.

Paris city hall said migrants are being bused to special migrant housing centers in Paris and the surrounding region, and offered help applying for asylum.

France has been criticized for its relatively slow response to the migrant crisis even as neighboring Germany has taken in hundreds of thousands of people.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team