In limbo in the Serbian forest

A few of the asylum seekers have tents, others have taken over woodland shacks. Many have only clothing to cover themselves at night and log fires for heat and cooking. This man was found living in an electricity sub-station.

All have legally sought asylum, but Serbia’s two asylum centres are full. Rights groups have expressed growing alarm and say the problem will only worsen as more migrants arrive.

In the village of Bogovadja, south of the capital, there are now as many asylum seekers as villagers. They form long queues to each receive one meal per day at the local asylum centre.

They are part of a wave of migration that has seen the number of asylum seekers in Serbia shoot up from 52 in 2008 to almost 4,000 so far this year.

The increase has been fed by the turmoil of the Arab Spring and, in particular, by the civil war that has raged for more than two years in Syria, killing over 100,000 people.

As the European Union squeezes traditional migration routes via the Mediterranean, migrants from conflict-torn areas are increasingly trying to go through the former Yugoslavia to reach the borderless Schengen zone that allows access to much of Western Europe.

Asylum seekers warm themselves around a fire in the forest.

The onset of winter makes housing the migrants all the more urgent, but efforts to do so have been hindered by local protests.

On November 28, Serbian authorities tried to move dozens of the asylum seekers to temporary accommodation in an abandoned workers barracks, but villagers blocked roads, and one of the barracks was torched.

Migrants spent most of the day on buses, and were later given shelter in a hotel, according to a spokeswoman for Serbia's Commissariat for Refugees and Migration.

"This is temporary," she said. "We are not going to give up."