RVSZKE: Hungarian riot police fired tear gas and sprayed water cannon on Wednesday at huge crowds of migrants desperate to cross the border from Serbia, as other groups of refugees carved out a new route through Croatia.

Tensions boiled over when hundreds of furious refugees and migrants tore down wire meshing across two blocked access routes to Hungarian territory at the flashpoint Roszke crossing, injuring 14 Hungarian police officers.

The Serbian government lodged a formal protest with Hungary over the use of tear gas on its territory, and Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic vowed to send police reinforcements to the Serbian side of the border to help calm tensions.Crowds who managed to overrun police lines and break through the fence at Roszke did not take advantage to run deeper into the central European country’s territory however, apparently wanting instead to show their frustration after Budapest sealed the border on Tuesday, a correspondent said.

The Hungarian government said that 14 police were injured in clashes against stone-throwing migrants. Police responded with water cannon and tear gas.

Gyorgy Bakondi, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief advisor, said the tough response came an hour after the migrants had issued an “ultimatum” to police, demanding to be let through.

“We will repair the fence, in fact we will put up a stronger fence,” he told a news conference.

In a further show of force, Hungary deployed three military vehicles mounted with guns some 100 to 200 metres from the border, a reporter at the scene said.Hungary has since Tuesday all but sealed the razorwire-topped border while threatening three-year jail sentences against anyone who tries to cross illegally.

Earlier on Wednesday, migrants desperate to find new ways to eastern Europe were granted access by Croatia.

By Wednesday afternoon, a total of 892 migrants had entered the Balkan nation, an interior ministry statement said, with the government adding it was expecting another 4,000 in coming days.Pressure is building for a special EU summit to come up with solutions to the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War II, with the bloc bitterly split and free movement across borders — a pillar of the European project — in jeopardy. Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said all migrants could pass through the EU state, allowing them to push on towards Slovenia, Austria and Hungary’s fenceless southwestern frontier.

“We are ready to accept and direct those people, their religion and colour of skin is completely irrelevant, to where they apparently wish to go — Germany and Scandinavia,” Milanovic told lawmakers. But his Slovakian counterpart Robert Fico added to the war of words between EU capitals by warning Europe was at risk from what he called a “migrant onslaught”.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play