by Our Foreign Desk

CROATIA opened its Serbian border to refugees yesterday, letting in thousands who had been stranded for two days.

The humanitarian crisis has been growing since Saturday, when Hungary closed its border with Croatia, creating a backlog of asylum-seekers.

“Without any announcement, the borders opened. When the borders opened, everybody rushed,” said United Nations refugee agency UNHCR spokeswoman Melita Sunjic.

“The last person to go was a young boy without a leg and we helped him cross in a wheelchair.”

There were between 2,000 and 3,000 refugees stuck on the border in mud and rain when the gates were opened.

The road from Serbia into Croatia testified to the treacherous conditions the people have endured since Croatian police stalled the flow.

Ankle-deep mud was everywhere and there were pools of water inside the tents where the refugees were sitting hoping for some cover.

Croatia had sent two trains and several buses earlier to the border with Slovenia, where officials accused the Croatians of breaking previous agreements to limit such transfers to 2,500 people a day.

Croatian officials insisted that no such binding deal could be enforced because they lacked legal powers to confine travellers to their emergency shelters.

When the first train containing 1,800 people stopped near Slovenia shortly after midnight, people found their path blocked in both directions by rival deployments of Croatian and Slovene police, each arguing that the refugees must seek shelter in the opposite direction.

This created an effective no-man’s land on the border and forced many to spend the night stuck in the open and struggling to sleep with distressed children amid bitter cold and driving rain.

Ms Sunjic said that the UNHCR estimated that there were over 10,000 refugees in Serbia — double the daily average of the past month.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said last night said he would not allow his country to be treated as a “concentration camp” for refugees, but he is willing to work with EU countries to stem the illegal flow of migrants.