Anger as Hungary seals borders

Serbia yesterday urged Hungary to reopen its razor-wire border fence erected to stop a record wave of migrants, as Germany's Angela Merkel called for an EU summit on the refugee crisis after a EU ministers meet failed to provide a deal.

While European leaders squabbled over how to manage Europe's biggest migrant influx since World War II, the exodus from war-torn Middle Eastern countries claimed more lives.

Another shipwreck off Turkey killed 22 refugees -- among them four children and 11 women -- who had tried to reach Europe, where more than half a million people have arrived this year to seek safe haven.

Hungary's conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban has tried to stop the migrant flow via Balkans countries with the hastily-erected fence along its Serbian border, completed yesterday, and announced plans for a similar barrier on its frontier with Romania.

In addition, Budapest made its first arrests under tough new laws punishing "illegal border-crossing" or damaging the border fence with prison terms of up to three years.

The controversial measures are part of Orban's strategy to stem the flow of migrants -- more than 200,000 of whom have entered his country so far this year -- travelling from Greece and transiting through the western Balkans and Hungary, most of them headed on via Austria to Germany.

But the Hungarian fences sparked fears in Serbia of an unmanageable number of migrants.

Hungary's moves have been sharply criticised, with the UN refugee agency saying it could be in violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Romania also criticised the fence planned along its own border as "out of step with the spirit of Europe".

Human rights group Amnesty International charged that "meeting those fleeing conflict and persecution with razor wire, troops and draconian new laws, Hungary is showing the ugly face of Europe's shambolic response to the growing refugee crisis".

In Berlin, Merkel and her Austrian counterpart Werner Faymann called for European solidarity to end the chaos and proposed a special EU summit next week.

EU officials later announced a meeting of interior ministers for September 22.

Berlin's move to bring back border controls on last Sunday has sparked a domino effect, with Austria and Slovakia also reimposing identity checks. With Poland and the Netherlands also considering similar measures, there are fears the Schengen system could collapse, even though its rules do allow states to impose temporary controls for security reasons.

New figures from the EU's Frontex border agency meanwhile showed more than half a million people had arrived in the year to August 31 -- almost double last year's total.

REFUGEE CRISIS IN EUROPE
22 killed as boat capsizes in Aegean Sea
Over 500,000 refugees crossed into
EU so far this year: report