BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Thousands of migrants flooded into Austria on Saturday, seeking refuge after shuttling for days in bordering countries that were unable or unwilling to offer them shelter. Austrian police said some 6,700 people traveled to the central European country from Hungary after being trapped Friday in a vicious tug-of-war as bickering European governments shut border crossings, blocked bridges and erected new barbed-wire fences in a bid to shut down the flow. On Saturday, the Greek coast guard said they failed to save a 5-year-old girl found in the sea off the island of Lesbos after the boat she traveled on sank, also leaving 14 others missing. Asylum-seekers who headed westward into Croatia after being beaten back by tear gas and water cannons on the Hungarian-Serbian border just days earlier found themselves being returned to Serbia or to Hungary, after Croatia declared it could not handle the influx. The EU's failure to find a unified response to the crisis left Croatia, one of the poorest countries in the European Union, squeezed between the blockades thrown up by Hungary and Slovenia and the unending flood of people flowing north from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
 |
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.sfgate.com |