Hungary shuts EU border, taking migrant crisis into its own hands, to fend off Muslim invasion; Muslims call on "Mama Merkel" so help them
SERBIAN-HUNGARIAN BORDER (Reuters) - Hungary's right-wing government shut the main land route for migrants into the European Union on Tuesday, taking matters into its own hands to halt Europe's influx of refugees.
An emergency effort led by Germany to force EU member states to accept mandatory quotas of refugees collapsed in discord.
Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed for European unity after one of her ministers called for financial penalties against countries that refused to accommodate their share of the migrants, provoking anger in central Europe.
A Czech official described such threats as empty but nonetheless "damaging" while Slovakia said they would bring the "end of the EU".
Under new rules that took effect from midnight, Hungary said anyone seeking asylum on its southern border with Serbia, the EU's external frontier, would automatically be turned back, and anyone trying to sneak through would face jail.
At the border, migrants barred from continuing their long journey north towards a new life in Germany chanted as the sun went down, and one held up a banner saying: "Mama Merkel, please help us!"
Families with small children sat in fields beneath the new 3.5-metre- (10-foot-) high fence, topped with razor wire, which blocks entry for migrants to the former communist country.
"Strike. No food. No water. Open this border," a woman had written on a child’s dress that she held above her head.
Migrants who tried to apply for asylum in a transit zone of metal containers were swiftly turned away. Macruf Suhufi Abdi Omar, a Somali, told Reuters he had been refused asylum barely an hour after he gave his fingerprints.
Hungarian officials said they had denied 16 asylum claims at the frontier within hours and were processing 32 more. Police had arrested 174 people for trying to sneak across the border.
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Number of migrants rounded up in Hungary plunges to 366 after crackdown
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - The number of migrants rounded up by police in Hungary plunged to 366 on Tuesday from a record 9,380 on Monday, after Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government shut the main land route for migrants entering the European Union, police data showed.
Under new rules that took effect from Tuesday, Hungary said anyone seeking asylum on its southern border with Serbia, the EU's external frontier, would automatically be turned back, and anyone trying to sneak through would face jail.
Migrants head for Croatia to avoid Hungarian fence
SID, Serbia — A first busload of migrants arrived early Wednesday near Serbia’s border with EU member Croatia hoping to circumvent a razor-wire fence erected by Hungary, as Germany’s Angela Merkel called for an EU summit on the refugee crisis.
The group of 30-40 mostly Syrian or Afghan migrants disembarked at the Serbian border town of Sid after an overnight journey from the Macedonian border at Presevo, 500 kilometers (300 miles) to the south.
“We heard that Hungary was closed so the police told us we should come this way,” said Amadou, 35, from Mauritania in western Africa. [...]
More than 367 migrants crossed illegally into Hungary on Tuesday, the first day after the country introduced tough laws on unauthorized entry, and all were arrested, local police said.
Of the total, 316 were to be prosecuted for damaging the barbed-wire fence, and the other 51 for illegally entering the country, police said.
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Migrants seek new ways to EU after Hungary shuts main route
SID, Serbia (Reuters) - Migrants walked through cornfields into the European Union through Serbia's western border with Croatia on Wednesday, opening a new front in the continent’s migration crisis after Hungary shut the main overland route.
Croatia said it was urgently sending demining experts to the border area to identify minefields left on the frontier from the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the last time hundreds of thousands of displaced people marched across Europe.
Hungary's decision to shut the EU's external border with Serbia this week was the most forceful attempt yet by a European country to close off the unprecedented flow of refugees and economic migrants overwhelming the bloc.
The route through Hungary has been the main one used by migrants who arrive first by dinghy in Greece and then trek across the Balkan peninsula to reach the EU's frontier-free Schengen zone, most eventually bound for Germany.
With that route closed, thousands of migrants remain in the Balkans seeking other paths north and west, possibly through Croatia and Romania, both of which are in the EU but not in Schengen.
Reuters reporters saw hundreds of people, some of whom identified themselves as Iraqis, trek through fields near the official Sid border crossing between Serbia and Croatia, a fellow former Yugoslav republic which joined the EU in 2013.
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Hungarian police say migrants break through border gate
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian police said a group of "aggressive" migrants had broken through a border gate from Serbia on Wednesday and were confronted by lines of riot police.
"Police is taking lawful and proportionate measures to protect the Hungarian state border and the external frontier of the European Union," police said in a statement.
Hungarian PM: If EU introduces migrant quotas, we'd have to accept them but it would be an invitation to the Middle Eastern migrants
BERLIN (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt that if the European Union decides to impose mandatory quotas of asylum seekers on member states, his country would have to comply.
"Then it would be law and we'd have to accept it," he said, adding that people in the Middle East would take the announcement of such a quota system as an invitation to come to Europe.
He said Hungary was prepared to talk about the quota system but only on a voluntary basis and only when the influx of refugees stopped.
Twenty police, two children hurt in Hungary-Serbia border clashes
Twenty Hungarian policemen and two children were injured on the Hungarian border with Serbia in clashes that erupted after a group of migrants tried to break through the frontier, the prime minister's security adviser said.
"So far 20 policemen have been injured and ambulance services have just taken two children (to hospital) who were injured after being thrown over the security fence," Gyorgy Bakondi told public television.
"We will definitely restore the fence and strengthen the fence and protect Hungary's security with all legal means."
Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said police would not let any migrants break through into Hungarian territory, adding that Hungary has not seen any cooperation on Wednesday from Serbian authorities to handle illegal migrants.
Hungary to build border fence with Croatia, Romania
VIENNA - Hungary will build a fence along portions of its border with Croatia, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in an interview with Austrian newspaper Die Presse published on Wednesday.
"We have decided to build a fence also on the border with Romania," Orban was quoted as saying in the interview posted on Die Presse's website. "We will also erect a fence at certain locations on the Croatian border,"
