Dozens of refugees traveled by bus to a Serbian town on the border with Croatia on Wednesday in hope of entering the EU after Hungary closed its border with the Balkan country.
10 buses full of refugees traveled from the southern Serbian town of Presevo to the border town of Sid, Sky News reported. The outlet added that a Reuters cameraman alleged to have seen more than 100 refugees walking into Croatia after being dropped off by bus.
The new route is being attempted by refugees after Hungary sealed its border with Serbia, building a 3.5 metre-high fence and enforcing tougher laws that would see anyone entering the former Soviet country's borders illegally being deported or arrested.
Only 366 people were detained attempting to enter Hungary from Serbia on Tuesday, according to Hungarian police, down thousands from the record number of 9,380 on Monday before the new laws came into effect. The new laws have left hundreds stranded at the Hungarian border.
However, the new route comes with additional dangers for those risking their lives to enter the EU's Schengen Zone. Aid groups are warning of the risks posed to refugees by leftover mines laid during the Balkan War in the 1990s.
"It is very dangerous—there are more than 50,000 mines, but they do not know about that," Daniel Szatmáry, the co-ordinator of the Hungary-based migrant volunteer group International Relationship for Peace, told The Telegraph newspaper.
On Monday, EU ministers failed to reach an agreement on a mandatory refugee quota to ease the burden on frontier EU member states absorbing thousands of refugees, delaying any decision until next month. Central European and eastern European member states, including Hungary and Czech Republic rejected the proposal.
Germany's vice chancellor condemned the EU's inaction on the issue, saying on Tuesday that the economic bloc had "disgraced itself." German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere suggested the idea of withholding financial incentives from the member states who do not sign-up to the proposals, saying they should receive "less money from the structural funds" of the EU.
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