Hungarian police on Monday closed off the main crossing point for thousands of migrants entering from Serbia every day, AFP journalists saw. Around 20 police were fencing off a 40-metre (-yard) gap in a razor-wire barrier along the border by a railway line as other officers blocked the track. A growing group of several dozen migrants including many children, some in pushchairs, were stuck on the Serbian side of the border, with several women crying.
There were also a number of soldiers present as well as half a dozen mounted police. The fence is around two and a half metres (eight feet) high and will include barbed wire once completed. The migrants were being directed to the official border crossing point around two kilometres (1.6 miles) to the west where there was a heavy police presence and helicopters overhead.
Some were being let through at the official crossing point. There was a big cheer as the first couple were allowed to enter. Two protestors, a Czech and a German, were meanwhile arrested on the Hungarian border after sitting on the railway line. EU member Hungary is on the front line of Europe's migrant crisis. Almost 200,000 people travelling up from Greece through the western Balkans have entered the country this year, most of them seeking to go to northern Europe. On Sunday, police said a record 5,809 people had entered, smashing the previous day's record of 4,330, despite coils of razorwire being unrolled along the Serbian border.
By around midday (1000 GMT) on Monday another 5,353 people had been intercepted, police said. The sharp increase came ahead of tough laws coming into force Tuesday under which people entering Hungary illegally can be jailed for up to three years. Hungary is also building a four-metre high (13-feet) fence all along its 175-kilometre (110-mile) border with Serbia that it intends to complete by the end of October or early November. The refugees and migrants, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Pakistanis, seek to travel onwards to Austria and then western Europe, particularly Germany and Sweden.