Europeans shut borders, block bridges, to halt migrant surge

ZAGREB, Croatia — Thousands of migrants were trapped Friday in a vicious tug-of-war as bickering European governments shut border crossings, blocked bridges and erected barbed-wire fences in a bid to stem the wave of humanity fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

Asylum-seekers who fled westward after being beaten back by tear gas and water cannon on the Hungarian-Serbian border just days earlier found themselves being returned to Serbia, where their ordeal began, after Croatia declared it could not handle the influx.

The EU’s failure to find a unified response to the crisis left the tiny Balkan nation, one of the poorest in the European Union, squeezed between the blockades thrown up by Hungary and Slovenia and the unending flood of people flowing north from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Caught in the middle of this high-stakes game of hot potato were the masses of miserable men, women and children who have found their way to the wealthier European nations they wish to settle in blocked at every turn.