Aid Fears For 10,000 Migrants Stuck In Serbia
Aid supplies are running out for 10,000 migrants currently stranded in Serbia, the United Nations refugee agency has warned.
Charities and aid agencies have been struggling to cope with huge numbers of people in makeshift camps after European countries further west limited the movement of people across their borders.
As bad weather hits the area, doctors are warning of medicine shortages and children suffering from hypothermia.
UNHCR spokeswoman Melita Sunjic, speaking from the Serbian-Croatian border, said: "It is like a big river of people, and if you stop the flow, you will have floods somewhere.
"There is a lack of food, lack of blankets, we are missing everything."
Dr Ramiz Momeni, London-based founder of the Humanitas Charity, said migrants in Berkasovo, on Serbia's border with Croatia, urgently need action from international leaders.
He said: "It's an onslaught of people - they just come and come.
"We don't have a chance to treat, we don't have the actual medicine to be given out to them, we don't have any more rain coats.
"As you can see people, children of ten days old, hypothermia, we don't have blankets to give them."
Aid workers said groups of migrants fought on Monday and chanted "open the gate" at Croatian police after a night spent under open skies, lashed by wind and rain.
The Balkans have been facing a growing backlog of people after Hungary closed its southern border, diverting migrants - many of them refugees from Syria - to Slovenia.
Slovenia imposed a daily limit of 2,500, although it claimed 5,000 migrants have entered the country on Monday, has been trading accusations with fellow European Union member Croatia.
Slovenia has said it can only allow as many people as it can register and send on to Austria and accused Croatia of ignoring attempts to work together.
Interior minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar said on Monday: "Yesterday the Croatian side stopped answering our phone calls so we do not know how many migrants to expect, which is making our work very difficult."
Croatia has said it has been dealing with 5,000 people entering the country every day and has in turn attempted to limit those crossing the border with Serbia.
Croatian minister Ranko Ostojic said: "Slovenia first said it could receive up to 8,000 migrants (daily), then 5,000, then 2,500 and now it has been reduced to zero. It would mean that the whole burden is being left to Croatia."
Most migrants want to reach Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said proposals for a fence along Germany's border with Austria would not stop migrants reaching the country.
The EU has agreed a plan, resisted by Hungary and several other ex-Communist members of the bloc, to share out 120,000 refugees among its members.
This is a small proportion of the 700,000 migrants the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) expects will reach Europe's borders from the Middle East, Africa and Asia this year.
