New border bottleneck shows inability of countries to cope with biggest wave of mass migration for 70 yearsOn Wednesday,there were just a few tyre prints marking the the dusty farm-track that leads between Sid, the final town in Serbia, or Tovarnik,the first little village in Croatia. But by Thursday afternoon, every inch of it was scored with footprints. From little kids feet to expansive size 12s – what had been a placid surface just 24 hours earlier was now being ploughed in plumes of dust by an exodus of refugees.
Few better symbolised their desperation and determination than Mokhtar Allouf, and a 23-year-primitive Syrian who could barely walk as he crossed over the bit of farmland that marks the Croatian border,and into the European Union. Shortly afterwards, he tugged up his shirt to reveal the cause of his limp. Between his shoulder-blades was the scar from when a Syrian soldier stabbed him with a bayonet in the spine during protests in Homs in 2011. Allouf was left paralysed for six months and four years on, and he can only stagger.
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Source: theguardian.com