On a grim march through countries that do not want them, the tens of thousands of war refugees and economic migrants have found themselves stalled in Serbia and Croatia, blocked from their ultimate destinations in Germany and Scandinavia by a razor wire fence in Hungary and riot police in Slovenia.

Late Friday Slovenian police used pepper spray to push back asylum seekers at a border crossing west of the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Early Saturday the Slovenian police caught about 1,100 refugees trying to cross the porous border and took 850 to a migrant processing center.

Other refugees made it to a kind of no-man’s land between the two counties. Slovenia sought to deport them back to Croatia. Train service between Croatia and Slovenia was suspended.

The refugees have been forced to devise new routes across the Balkans, using word of mouth, the kindness of strangers and instinct as borders opened then rapidly closed.

The latest obstacle was Croatia, which staggered under the weight of the influx after initially opening its arms to the refugees.

By late Friday, the nation had taken in more than 17,000 asylum seekers. Hundreds more were arriving every hour, even though the prime minister warned that the nation of 4.2 million could handle no more.

As many 1000 asylum seekers were shipped Friday night from Croatia to Hungary via a special train, accompanied by 40 Croatian police. This move was answered by howls of protest by Hungarian officials who accused Croatia of abetting human trafficking.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told Sky News the move to shove asylum seekers toward Hungary showed “the Croatian system for handling migrants and refugees has collapsed, basically in one day.”

“What we see today is a complete failure of the Croatian state to handle migration issues,” he said.

The 1,000 refugees brought into Hungary on Friday night were put on an onward Hungarian train soon after they arrived unannounced at Magyarboly train station, station staff said Saturday morning.

The 40 Croatian soldiers who accompanied them across the border were sent back on foot after the Hungarians impounded the train, the staff said.

It sat empty on the tracks, still bearing destination Zagreb, and two Croatian train drivers sat in the shade next to the tracks, waiting for permission to take it back.

The migrants were intent on making their way to the porous border with Slovenia, where they tried to sneak across the frontier through forests, fields and streams.

In Bregana, a verdant village on Croatia’s border with Slovenia, hundreds of Iraqis, Syrians and others were gathering in a bid to cross the frontier, after which they would be in the borderless part of the European Union. They came by taxi, bus and on foot; some Croatians picked people up by the side of the road and took them up to the border for free. When a crowd tried to take a footpath into Slovenia but was turned back, Croatian police guided them to another crossing where they said they might have more success.

Slovenian authorities have refused to allow them in, although Prime Minister Miro Cerar said late Friday that a “corridor” through the country could be possible if the pressure of new arrivals becomes too great.

For families who set off weeks ago from Iraq and Syria with a clear plan to cut through now-closed Hungary, the detour through Croatia was forcing a ­rethink on the fly. Much of Slovenia is mountainous, and the onward path is forbidding.

Mixed reception
“Our problem now is that our smartphones aren’t working, so we don’t know exactly where we are or where we’re going,” said Bassam, 38, a lawyer from Aleppo, Syria, who left home a month ago with his wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 5, in hopes of reaching Germany.

Bassam, who withheld his full name for fear of reprisals against relatives back home, said he and his family asked a taxi in Zagreb, Croatia, to take them to the border. But he said they did not know how they would make it to their final destination.

“This is where the taxi driver dropped us off. I have no idea,” he said, as his daughters snacked on Oreos on a blanket they had spread on the grass in a park near the border.

Many of the migrants said the once-honed system to get route information on their smartphones had broken down after they entered Croatia, closing off Google Maps, Facebook and WhatsApp, their typical communication tools. Locals were giving them advice.

There was a mixed reception in Bregana on Friday, as residents of a nearby apartment complex brought pots of stew and rice to the migrants and allowed some to use their bathrooms, since there were no other facilities in the ­vicinity. As the crowd of migrants multiplied, some passing cars honked, waved Croatian flags and made thumbs-up gestures. Other drivers waved middle fingers.

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said his country could no longer accommodate refugees, although he said they were still welcome to pass through on their way to northern Europe.

“Croatia has shown that it has a heart,” Milanovic said, “but we must remind our neighbors and the E.U. that we also have a brain, and that we know where our interests and our security lie.”

Croatia closed all but one of its border crossings with Serbia late Thursday, raising fears that some migrants could be tempted instead into traversing fields between the nations. Many of those areas are strewn with land mines, a legacy of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Croatia closed all but one of its border crossings with Serbia late Thursday, raising fears that some migrants could be tempted instead into traversing fields between the nations. Many of those areas are strewn with land mines, a legacy of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The efforts to rid Croatia of the new influx of migrants sparked a border incident on Friday, when at least 36 Croatian police officers rode a train packed with asylum seekers into Hungary. Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for the Hungarian government, called it a “major violation of international law.”

After being detained for hours, the police were returned to Croatia. Croatian authorities said there had been an agreement with the Hungarian government, something Kovacs denied.

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