SZENTGOTTHARD, Hungary -- Thousands of migrants flooded into Austria on Saturday after days of shuttling from one country to another or seeing their paths into western Europe blocked by border guards with dogs, razor-wire fences, barricaded bridges or riot police.
Austrian police said some 10,000 people traveled to the central European country after being trapped Friday in a tug of war as European governments rapidly shut down border crossings or erected fences to cut down on the torrent of asylum seekers.
Adeeb Jaafri, a theater student from Damascus, crossed Saturday into Heiligenkreuz in Austria.
"Right now, I feel like I've been born anew. Now I don't even see these long queues in front of me," he said. "It makes no difference to me whether I am delayed, whether I stay here two days. The important thing is that I've finally arrived. And that I am now finally safe."
Others raised their arms in joy as they crossed the border, a milestone in their journey to safety. But the journey was chaotic, and reports emerged of families being separated as they fought for space on buses.
On the Hungarian side of the Austrian border, Hala Khatib of Damascus and her three daughters wept uncontrollably.
"I want to go to Germany. My husband is in Germany. I've come here all alone to this country. Please let me go," she said, sobbing. "I am exhausted. Me and my children, we're exhausted."
Tens of thousands more are expected as people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia cross the seas from Turkey to Greece and head north through Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary.
In the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean, the Italian coast guard said Saturday that it had coordinated the rescue of 4,343 people from smugglers' boats off the coast of Libya in just one day. Adding to the tally, a Norwegian vessel rescued another 335 people. The Greek coast guard said a 5-year-old girl found in the sea off the island of Lesbos died after her boat sank. Fourteen others are missing.
The normal routes north into western Europe all but disintegrated last week.
Asylum seekers who had headed into Croatia after being beaten back by tear gas and water cannons on the Hungarian-Serbian border found themselves being returned on buses or trains back to Serbia or Hungary after Croatia declared it could not handle 20,700 people who have arrived since Wednesday. Those who went from Croatia to Slovenia, seeking another way into Austria, faced blocked bridges and determined Slovenian riot police.
Croatian buses carried hundreds of people Saturday to the Beremend crossing in Hungary. In orderly lines, the migrants walked across the border to climb aboard blue Hungarian buses heading for registration centers.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto accused Croatia of violating Hungary's sovereignty by taking migrants across the border "without any kind of prior permission."
Hungary's military, meanwhile, announced it was calling up 500 army reservists to further reinforce its borders.
Though sympathetic to their plight, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic demanded that the European Union step forward and take responsibility for the people passing through the country of 4.2 million.
"We're flooded, local communities are flooded, the numbers of refugees in some areas is far greater [than] the number of local residents," she said. "So we need to control, we need to stop the flow, we need to get reassurances from European Union about what happens to these people who are already in Croatia."
Mindful that hundreds of migrants were walking through Croatian cornfields and forests to cross her country, Kitarovic stressed that further measures would be taken to secure Croatia's borders. She also warned of the dangers of mines left over from the country's 1991-95 war.
"I will advise highly anyone to use official crossings. But we have to take further measures to insure stability on the border, and that there are no breaches through the cornfields, or forests or any other areas," she said.
The thousands seeking sanctuary as borders close around them are camping in the open, sleeping on streets, exposed to heat in the day and cold in the night.
Police in Slovenia say more than 1,000 migrants have entered the country, but hundreds more are waiting at the border as only a limited number is allowed to cross. As temperatures dipped overnight, hundreds of people at the Obrezje crossing set up tents, camping out without food or water.
European Union enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn on Saturday proposed giving $1.1 billion to Turkey to deal with the migrant crisis. He spoke after touring a refugee camp in Gevgelija, on Macedonia's southern border with Greece, where about 5,000 people are passing through daily.
Information for this article was contributed by Dalton Bennett, Vanessa Gera, Alex Kuli and Kirsten Grieshaber of The Associated Press.
A Section on 09/20/2015