OPATOVAC, Croatia/LJUBLJANA: Migrants streaming across the Balkans reached Slovenia on Saturday, diverted overnight by the closure of Hungary’s border with Croatia in the latest demonstration of Europe’s disjointed response to the flow of people reaching its borders.

Hungary’s right-wing government declared its southern frontier with Croatia off limits to migrants, blocking entry with a metal fence and razor wire just as it did a month ago on its border with Serbia.

Croatia began directing migrants west to Slovenia, which said some 300 had arrived and would be registered before continuing their journey to Austria and Germany, the preferred destination of the vast majority, many of them Syrians fleeing war.

But their movement had slowed visibly, with dozens of buses lined up at Serbia’s border with Croatia through the night and into Saturday as Croatian police controlled their entry, a Reuters reporter said. Slovenia suspended rail traffic with Croatia.

Aid agencies are concerned about backlogs of migrants building in the Balkans, battered by autumn winds and rain as temperatures drop before winter.

Hungary said it had reinstated border controls on its frontier with Slovenia, effectively suspending Europe’s Schengen system of passport-free travel. Both Slovenia and Hungary are part of the Schengen Area while Croatia is not.

A government spokesman said Budapest had taken the step because “migrants appeared” on the Slovenian side of the border.

Slovenia, a small country of two million people, says it can accommodate up to 8,000 migrants per day. Both Ljubljana and Zagreb say they will not restrict the flow so long as Austria and Germany keep their doors open.

The first 100 migrants in this new wave had reached Austria, a spokesman for the police in Austria’s southeastern province of Styria, which borders Slovenia, said on Saturday afternoon. Hundreds more were expected later in the day, he added.

Hungary says it is duty-bound to secure the borders of the European Union from mainly Muslim migrants threatening, it says, the prosperity, security and “Christian values” of Europe.

Budapest is among several ex-Communist members of the EU that oppose an EU plan to share out 120,000 refugees among its members. That is only a small proportion of the 700,000 migrants expected to reach Europe’s shores by boat and dinghy from North Africa and Turkey this year, many of them fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

A disused school in southern Sweden that was planned to house 80 refugees has burned to the ground in what police say is a case of “aggravated arson.”

No arrests have been made.

Ljungby town officials said the school in Kanna had been destroyed. It closed in 2011and had received a make-over to be ready to house refugees.

Earlier this month, Sweden’s government has ordered the immigration agency to set up tents to provide temporary accommodation and has tasked local authorities with drawing up an inventory of all premises that can be used as shelters.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told refugee children at a shelter in Rome not to despair, saying he too as a child was forced to flee war.

Ban asked any 6-year-olds at a pre-school and shelter run by the Community of Sant’Egidio non-governmental organization hosting refugees and asylum-seekers to raise their hands. He told them that he fled his village in Korea in 1950, when he was their age, because “there was a big and very terrible war in Korea.” He added: “Don’t lose your hope, don’t despair.”

During the visit, Ban also welcomed the US government decision to extend the military mission in Afghanistan and urged European countries “to show global solidarity” in taking in migrants seeking to escape war, discrimination and hunger.

Twelve migrants drowned Saturday when their boat sank off the Turkish coast as they were seeking to reach Greece, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The Turkish coast guard recovered the bodies from the wooden boat, which had sailed from northwest Turkey’s seaside town of Ayvalik headed for the Greek island of Lesbos, the Turkish news agency said.

A disused school in southern Sweden that was planned to house 80 refugees has burned to the ground in what police say is a case of “aggravated arson.”

No arrests have been made.

Ljungby town officials said the school in Kanna had been destroyed. It closed in 2011and had received a make-over to be ready to house refugees.

Earlier this month, Sweden’s government has ordered the immigration agency to set up tents to provide temporary accommodation and has tasked local authorities with drawing up an inventory of all premises that can be used as shelters.

More than 150,000 asylum seekers are expected to arrive in Sweden this year.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she won’t offer “false solutions” to the migrant crisis as she faces pressure to do more to limit the influx.

Merkel told Saturday’s edition of the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Germany can control its borders but not close them completely — “that wouldn’t even succeed with a fence, as the example of Hungary shows.”

Thousands of new arrivals a day have been stretching Germany’s capacity to house refugees and other migrants. But Merkel said she won’t promise “false solutions” because they wouldn’t even hold for two weeks and would create bigger disappointment that the problem hasn’t been resolved.

Merkel added: “I am working with all my power for sustainable solutions, and they don’t depend on us Germans alone and will take time.”