The disturbances began midafternoon after several hundred migrants frustrated at Hungary’s closure of its frontier this week — previously a major entry point into the EU — began shouting slogans, reported AFP correspondents.
The situation escalated and clashes raged for over four hours, with black-helmeted riot police firing tear gas and water cannon as migrants threw stones, sticks and plastic bottles.
Fourteen police were injured, authorities said.
The Hungarian authorities even brought up several “Humvee” military vehicles mounted with guns and stationed them 100-200 metres back from the border.
Several dozen of the migrants managed to pull down wire meshing across two access routes to Hungarian territory, with police in body armour retreating some 50 metres then firing more tear gas.
The migrants did not however take advantage and run deeper into Hungary, apparently wanting instead to show their frustration after Hungary sealed the border on Tuesday, the AFP correspondents said.
The crowd, young men from the Middle East mostly from Iraq and Syria, shouted “Yalla!” ("Let’s go!” in Arabic) as they threw pieces of tarmac at the police and continued advancing despite the tear gas.
Serb police intervene
The situation eventually calmed down after around 20 Serbian police intervened and the country’s refugees minister Aleksandar Vulin arrived in person to ease tensions.
Gyorgy Bakondi, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief adviser, said that an hour before the clashes began, the migrants had issued an “ultimatum” to police.
“They said either let them through or they will use violence, the Hungarian police naturally do not give way to any ultimatum,” he told a news conference in the southern city of Szeged near the Serbian border.
“We will repair the fence, in fact we will put up a stronger fence,” he said. A Hungarian government spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, said: “Illegal migrants throwing objects attacked the Hungarian border, and broke through the fence.
“Since then Hungarian police have been defending the Hungarian border with their own bodies, preventing violent migrants from getting through to Hungary.” More than 200,000 migrants and refugees have crossed into EU member Hungary this year after travelling up from Greece through the western Balkans. Most then sought to travel onwards to western Europe, particularly Germany and Sweden.
As a result of the border closure, migrants began entering Croatia on Wednesday, with the Croatian interior ministry in the evening putting the total number at nearly 1,200.
Croatia’s prime minister said he would not hinder their passage, and many were expected to attempt to cross the 670-kilometre frontier with Slovenia, which borders Austria, Italy and Hungary.
Slovenia’s chief of police said that since the country, unlike Croatia, is in the borderless Schengen zone, the frontier was “under strong police control”.
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