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Sunday, October 25, 2015

Refugee flow unabated as EU leaders hold summit on crisis

BRUSSELS (AP) — As thousands of Syrians, Afghans and others kept up their relentless march through the Balkans, European leaders held an emergency summit Sunday to find ways of easing the plight of those caught up in the continent's greatest immigration crisis in decades. In a draft of the meeting's conclusions seen by The Associated Press, the leaders were looking to shore up Greece's porous border with Turkey and slow the flow of people heading north toward the European Union's heartland. At Slovenia's overwhelmed Brezice refugee camp near the border with Croatia, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency urged leaders to come up with a system to register and screen newcomers when they first enter Europe, rather than in piecemeal attempts at borders along the way. A draft plan that they were to discuss has already drawn criticism for proposing that countries stop allowing asylum-seekers to pass across their borders without consulting with their neighbors. In the Austrian border town of Spielfeld, police said 2,500 asylum-seekers spent the night in tents and 7,000 more were expected to come in Sunday from Slovenia, the dpa news agency reported.


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