The latest from the migrant crisis, as a new route, including new countries looks set to open up.
From midnight to 9 pm on Monday, 8,442 refugees entered Croatia. Since the beginning of the refugee crisis, 312,113 migrants and refugees have entered Croatia, according to the Ministry of Interior, reports Index.hr and Jutarnji List on November 3, 2015.
The Ministry has announced that on Tuesday morning the first train with migrants from Tovarnik will arrive in the winter transit centre in Slavonski Brod (Bjeliš). Starting on Wednesday, groups of 1,000 refugees should be coming to Slavonski Brod directly from Šid in Serbia, where they will be registered by the Serbian police and members of Frontex, which will include police officers from Croatia as well, Croatian interior minister Ranko Ostojić said on Monday.
The camp in Slavonski Brod is ready to accept several thousand migrants in two large tents. The construction has been finished, and doctors are prepared for possible medical interventions. According to minister Ostojić, Croatia is fulfilling all the obligations from the plan agreed between EU leaders. In the future, refugee trains will include at most a thousand people, which will make processing easier.
“The agreement is working well and I believe that will continue in the future as well, with good coordination between all the countries on the migrant route. Every day, between 6,000 and 7,000 refugees will be arriving to Slavonski Brod, and then they will be transported to Slovenia and Austria”, Ostojić said. Tired and exhausted migrants will be accommodated in heated tents with beds, while vulnerable groups such as families, women with children and the elderly will be placed in special mobile homes. The centre is divided into six sectors, each of which has its separate toilets and shower facilities. The camp is provided with an infirmary where refugees will be able to receive full medical care and they will not need to go to local hospitals. “In Opatovac, we have learnt that the refugees do not want to go to hospitals because they are afraid of being separated from their family members”, Maja Grba Bujević, head of the crisis centre of the Ministry of Health, said.
In the meantime, a new Balkan migrant route for people from the Middle East seems to be opening. After a 35-year-old Syrian national illegally crossed Croatian border with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Donji Lapac area last week, on Sunday in Vrhovine, in an abandoned train station, four Kurds with Turkish citizenship were arrested.
It is just a question of time when a group of 15 new refugees who are currently located in the area of Bihać will enter Croatia, said the four arrested illegal aliens in their statement, so the Lika police is on full alert. There are fears that they could be only a precursor of a large wave that could reach Croatia through a route that few people expected.
Like the rest of migrants, this group came from Turkey by sea to Greece, but then did not set out for Macedonia. They went through Albania and Montenegro, came to Sarajevo and then to Bihać. Not far from the Željava military airfield they entered Croatia and continued towards the Plitvice Lakes.
While walking the road between Plitvice and Korenica, they managed to found someone who transported them to Vrhovine, a town halfway between the Plitvice Lakes and Otočac. They wanted to continue to Rijeka and reach the northern Italy through Slovenia, since borders at that area are much softer than at Šentilj border crossing between Slovenia and Austria. But, after 21 days of travel in buses, taxis and on foot, they were arrested in Vrhovine. They will most likely be deported to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The new route would mean that Bosnia and Herzegovina would for the first time have to deal with the problem of refugees.
