12,000 migrants arrive in Slovenia; authorities ask EU for help
More than 12,000 migrants have crossed into Slovenia in the past 24 hours and thousands more are expected, prompting authorities to ask the rest of the European Union (EU) -for help dealing with the flood of people.
Slovenia has asked the EU for police to help regulate the flow coming from Croatia, Interior Minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar told TV Slovenia.
EU officials said Austria, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland offered to send police reinforcements.
"We are standing by Slovenia in these difficult moments, Slovenia is not alone," European migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, said after meeting Gyorkos Znidar.
The EU executive later said Slovenia had formally requested tents, blankets and other supplies under the bloc's disaster relief programmed.
Croatia also decided on October 22 to seek international help, the news agency Hina reported. The government in Zagreb said it would ask for blankets, winter tents, beds and containers.
Since mid-September, 217,000 refugees have entered Croatia.
Migrants began streaming into Slovenia on October 16, when Hungary closed its border with Croatia. Before then, they were heading for Hungary - a member of Europe's Schengen zone of visa-free travel - and then north and west to Austria and Germany. Sealing the border diverted them to Slovenia, which is also a member of the Schengen zone.
The daily cost of handling migrants was costing the former Yugoslav republic 770,000 euros (US$856,000), Gyorkos Znidar said.
Illustrating the pressure on a nation of just 2 million, authorities said a big national league soccer match would not go ahead in the capital because police were stretched too thin with the migrants to provide crowd control at the game.