Hungary starts border fence

After alien surge, aim is to block 109 miles by September

Hungarian soldiers watch a ringing-machine drive steel posts into the earth as they construct a temporary fence on Hungary’s southern border with Serbia near Morahalomon Monday.
Hungarian soldiers watch a ringing-machine drive steel posts into the earth as they construct a temporary fence on Hungary’s southern border with Serbia near Morahalomon Monday.

ASOTTHALOM, Hungary -- Hungarian soldiers started building a fence Monday on the border with Serbia to stop the rising number of foreigners trying to enter the country.

On the outskirts of the southern village of Asotthalom, soldiers were using heavy machinery to drive metal rods into the ground, the first steps in the construction of the nearly 13-foot-high fence, which the government wants to finish by Aug. 31 along the 109-mile border.

On July 16, government officials presented a 164-yard sample section of the fence, built to test different construction techniques and materials, but construction began in earnest Monday.

Work on the fence is being carried out in several places at once, with about 900 soldiers taking part in the project.

Some elements of the fence, including the razor wire to be placed on top of the barrier, are being prepared by inmates from Hungarian prisons.

People in a state work program also may be sent to help the soldiers.

More than 100,000 foreigners have reached Hungary on routes across the Balkans so far in 2015, compared with fewer than 43,000 asylum-seekers last year and 18,900 in 2013.

The initial sections of the fence will be built in areas that are most heavily used by human smugglers, whom Hungarian authorities blame for the jump in the number of foreigners.

In the latest case, prosecutors said Monday that they had arrested five people, including three police officers, suspected of smuggling foreigners in southern Hungary.

Between Friday and Sunday, nearly 4,500 people were caught entering Hungary without permission.

Ahmed Saad, a refugee from the Yazidi Kurdish community in Iraq, said his group had walked across Turkey and Bulgaria from their hometown of Sinjar.

"We left all -- my job, all my car, my house, all things, because we ran going to Germany," Saad said near Asotthalom shortly after crossing into Hungary.

Although in the past most of the travelers were from Kosovo, in the past several months about 80 percent of them are from war zones including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly all request asylum in Hungary but try to move to European Union countries farther west, such as Germany, Sweden or Britain, before their claims are settled.

Elsewhere on Monday, a Moroccan man died from suffocation while being smuggled into Spain by his brother inside a suitcase that was in the trunk of a car on a ferry crossing, authorities said.

Francisco Jerez, spokesman for the Interior Ministry's office in Almeria, said the 27-year-old man was found late Sunday when his brother sought medical help for him just before the ferry arrived in the southern Spanish port.

Jerez added that the brother, a Moroccan with a French passport, was arrested.

The ferry had arrived from Melilla, one of two Spanish port city enclaves in northwestern Africa that are bordered by Morocco and the Mediterranean Sea and represent the only land route between Africa and Europe.

Thousands of people from Morocco try to enter Spain illegally each year, especially through the enclaves.

A Section on 08/04/2015

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