Thousands of refugees stranded in Balkans

The Balkans was struggling yesterday with a growing backlog of migrants after Hungary sealed its southern border and Slovenia tried to impose a limit, leaving thousands stranded on cold, wet borders where tempers frayed.

Having declared that it would accept only 2,500 per day, Slovenia said 5,000 had arrived from Croatia on Monday, with another 1,200 on their way by train.

“Croatia is ignoring our pleas, our plans,” Bostjan Sefic, state secretary at Slovenia’s interior ministry, told a news conference, saying the army would be called in to help if such a rate continued.