After suddenly landing in the path of the biggest migration in Europe for decades, Croatia said on Friday it could no longer offer them refuge and would wave them onward, challenging the EU to find a policy to receive them.
The migrants, mostly from poor or war-torn countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, have streamed into Croatia since Wednesday, after Hungary blocked what had been the main route with a metal fence and riot police at its border with Serbia, Reuters reported.
"We cannot register and accommodate these people any longer," Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic told a news conference in the capital Zagreb.
"They will get food, water and medical help and then they can move on. The European Union must know that Croatia will not become a migrant 'hotspot'. We have hearts, but we also have heads."
The arrival of 13,000 in the space of 48 hours, many crossing fields and some dodging police, has proved too much for one of the EU's less prosperous states in a crisis that has divided the 28-nation bloc and left it scrambling to respond. More than 473,000 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year, the International Organization for Migration said, most of them from countries at war such as Syria.
Hundreds of thousands have been trekking across the Balkan Peninsula to reach the richer European countries north and west, especially Germany, which is preparing to accept 800,000 asylum seekers this year.
