Up to 5,000 people arrived at the tiny train station overnight; police sat nervously along the track. PHOTO: AFP
"There are between 4,000 and 5,000 people here," Jan Kapic, a UNHCR spokesperson, said from the small town in eastern Croatia. "Trains are coming but they can't take all these people."
Up to 5,000 people arrived at the tiny train station overnight. The station was overwhelmed and people slept along the side of the tracks, an AFP correspondent saw.
Police were lined up nervously along the track.
When a rumour spread that a train was coming, thousands of migrants leapt to their feet, pressing against the rail line. It proved a false alarm and everyone sat down again.
The migrants have entered Croatia in the past 24 hours, after Hungary effectively sealed its border, shutting off a major entry point into the European Union (EU).
Only a handful of Red Cross workers were on hand at the station to give out food and provisions for the hundreds of babies and children there.
More help was on the way, said Kapic, including medical assistance and toilets, the first of which were being delivered around 9:00 am.
"For now we have enough but more will be needed and is on the way," he said.
Read: Migrants settle scores with Hungarian police
"It is very hard to say if this will become the next transit camp. It is down to the Croatian government how it deals with this," said Kapic.
He also said that the migrants were now coming straight to the train station without going to the police station for registration, with police overwhelmed by the numbers.
It was unclear where the migrants would go from Croatia, which borders Slovenia, Austria and Hungary, all of which are unlike Croatia members of the passport-free Schengen zone.
"I tried to take the train to Bulgaria but the line was closed so we had to come here," Hasan Shekh-Hasan, 25, a law student from Idlib in Syria, told AFP at the station.
Having paid 115 euros to get a taxi from the Serbian capital Belgrade to the border, he said he hoped Slovenia was open so he can keep going to his brother in Sweden.
"It is very hard here. There are so many people. We don't know what is happening," he said.
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