PRESEVO, Serbia: At least 2,000 more migrants flooded overnight into Serbia in a desperate journey to try and go on to Hungary, the door into the European Union, a UN official said on Monday.
At least 7,000 people — mostly refugees from the brutal war in Syria — have been registered so far in the last days in overwhelmed Serbia as Europe’s worst refugee crisis in half a century rapidly worsens.
All of them entered Serbia from Macedonia, where police on Saturday re-opened the border with Greece after spending three days trying to hold back the streams of migrants, when hundreds braved barbed wire fences and stun grenades to force their way through.
“The latest developments in Macedonia have led to a congestion and we now have tens of thousands of refugees who have entered Serbia from Macedonia,” Davor Rako, a local official for the UN refugee agency told AFP in the southern Serbian town of Presevo.
He said about 2,000 more migrants had registered at the border village of Miratovac, where Serbian authorities and the UNHCR have set up a reception centre with eight huge tents.
Buses were being laid on to nearby Presevo where police hand out officials’ documents and help migrants find their way towards their next destination, the border with Hungary.