The migrant flow through Croatia shows no sign of slowing down.
In the nine days of the refugee crisis, Croatia has so far received more than 55,000 refugees, with new refugees continuously arriving at the Croatian border. On average it is about 5,000 refugees a day, or exactly the number of refugees which daily enter Serbia from Macedonia. During the last night, most of them came to Croatia at the Bapska area. All of them have been sent to the reception centre in Opatovac from where they will be transferred to the border with Hungary. Last night and this morning, two refugee trains have left Tovarnik towards Hungary. It is expected that up to 10,000 refugees could enter Croatia today, reports Index.hr and Vecernji List on September 25, 2015.
During the last night, the reception centre in Opatovac received about 5,000 migrants and refugees, confirmed to the press on Friday morning Croatian interior minister Ranko Ostojić. “We believe that here in Opatovac everything is under control. We are trying as much as we can, however, refugees are arriving by the hour”, said Ostojić, adding that big problems are caused by worsening weather conditions, rain and cold.
The Office of the Croatian President has announced that the president’s commissioner for migrant crisis Andrija Hebrang and coordinator of the Operational Group for the Migrant Crisis Mate Granić will visit the reception centre in Opatovac today.
Without having informed Slovenia, Hungary has started putting wire fence on parts of their mutual border. In addition to fence, the Hungarian police and soldiers are overseeing the border, writes Slovenian daily Delo. In a telephone call on Thursday night, the Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto told his Slovenian counterpart Karl Erjavec that placing wire fences was just a temporary measure. Apparently, Hungary is afraid of a new big wave of migrants.
One of the new routes that some of the refugees could perhaps take could go through Montenegro, and then to Croatia. According to the Montenegrin daily Vijesti, Montenegro is preparing for the possible arrival of 2000 refugees a day. “Bearing in mind that the daily inflow into the Western Balkan countries is 5,000 people a day, Montenegro is preparing for the arrival of an average of 2,000 refugees a day. Because of the new situation on the Serbian-Hungarian border, as well as the inability of Macedonia and Serbia to absorb the huge influx of migrants and refugees, it is possible that a number of them could decide to go through Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro to Western Europe”, claims the document which was discussed yesterday by the Montenegrin authorities.
The Dubrovnik-Neretva Police Department has no indication that the refugees will arrive there. However, the police, the city of Dubrovnik and the utilities companies have for the past ten days been actively preparing for the reception of refugees who could come through this route.
