Migrants wait for a train at a railway station, near the official border between Serbia and Croatia. (AFP Photo)
ZAGREB: Croatia said today that more than 6,000 migrants had entered the country from Serbia in little more than 24 hours, and more than 20,000 were expected over the next two weeks.But it also warned it had only a limited ability to cope if the flow, triggered by Hungary's decision to close its border with Serbia, became "tens of thousands."
"We expect a peak within the next two weeks... (of) over 20,000 migrants," Health Minister Sinisa Varga said, quoted by the state-run HINA news agency.
The interior ministry said Thursday 6,200 migrants had arrived in the Balkan country from Serbia in a little more than 24 hours.
The migrants, who started to enter Croatia early on Wednesday, were being registered with police in Tovarnik, near the border with Serbia.
From there they were transported by buses and train to reception centres and other facilities, of which there are currently five, including one in the capital Zagreb.
Croatia said earlier it would allow free passage to refugees, with Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic strongly criticising Hungary's border controls.
But on Thursday, Milanovic warned that his small country of 4.2 million inhabitants had limited capacity for accepting and registering thousands of migrants.
"We will be very constructive and cooperative (regarding migrants) but emphasise that there are limits to our capacities," Milanovic told a cabinet session.
His foreign minister, Vesna Pusic, also warned that Zagreb could not cope if the number increased dramatically.
"We are ready to (provide) asylum to a few thousand people and we can handle that, but we are not ready for tens of thousands," Pusic told state-run HRT television.
Croatia has some 6,000 border police deployed.
Its border with Serbia lies in flat terrain that is relatively easy to traverse.
Bozo Galic, head of the eastern county where Tovarnik is located, described the situation there as a "humanitarian disaster," state-run HINA news agency reported.
He urged the government to swiftly make a plan to resolve the humanitarian crisis and set up a crisis headquarters at the train station in Tovarnik where between 4,000 and 5,000 migrants tried to board trains to Zagreb earlier today.
Since the start of the crisis the Croatian authorities have urged solidarity with migrants, recalling its own role in accommodating hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced people during the 1990s Balkans wars.
A crisis meeting of the country's top security body, the National Security Council, will be held tomorrow.