mid chaotic scenes at its border with Serbia, Croatia said on Thursday it could not cope with a flood of refugees seeking a new route into the EU after Hungary kept them out by erecting a fence and using tear gas and water cannon against them.
The European Union’s newest member state said it may try to stop taking in refugees, just as the 28-nation bloc announced it leaders would hold an emergency summit on September 23 to try to resolve the migration crisis, which has deeply divided it.
More than 7,300 people entered Croatia from Serbia in the 24 hours after Wednesday’s clashes between Hungarian riot police and stone-throwing refugees at its Balkan neighbour’s frontier.
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At the eastern border town of Tovarnik, Croatian riot police struggled to keep crowds of men, women and children back from rail tracks after long queues formed in baking heat for buses bound for reception centres elsewhere in Croatia.
Police were also deployed in a suburb of the capital Zagreb, taking up positions around a hotel housing hundreds of refugees, some of them on balconies shouting “Freedom! Freedom!”. Others threw rolls of toilet paper from the balconies and windows.
“Croatia will not be able to receive more people,” Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic told reporters in Tovarnik.
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He added that Croatia would not simply let refugees head north to Slovenia, which is part of the EU’s Schengen zone of border-free travel.
Deep divisions The EU is split over how to cope with the influx of people mostly fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
European Council President Donald Tusk summoned EU leaders to an extraordinary summit next Wednesday to discuss migration and a proposed scheme to distribute 120,000 asylum seekers across the bloc.
The bloc’s interior ministers failed on Monday to agree on a mandatory quota system designed to spread the burden of this year's huge influx of refugees and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the EU’s most powerful member state, had called for an emergency summit.
EU commissioner for migration Dimitris Avromopoulos rebuked Hungary over its actions, telling a joint news conference with Hungary’s foreign and interior ministers that most of those arriving in Europe were Syrians “in need of our help.”