European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos (R) meets migrants at the "Moria" camp, near the port of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos on October 16, 2015. The European Union's top migration official was visiting the Greek island of Lesbos today, a day after the dangerous Aegean Sea crossing attempted by thousands of migrants claimed seven more lives. AFP PHOTO / DIMITAR DILKOFF

SREDETS: The European Union yesterday grappled with a dark new turn in its refugee crisis after Bulgarian border guards shot dead an Afghan migrant in the first such fatality in the months-long humanitarian drama. The killing-described by Bulgaria as an accident that it deeply regretted-occurred late Thursday, just before the EU and Turkey struck a deal aimed at stemming a massive influx of migrants into the bloc.  The accord, meanwhile, appeared to hit an early bump in the road as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mocked Brussels for its contribution in tackling the Syrian refugee crisis and challenged it to take Ankara's bid for EU membership more seriously.

The fatal border shooting was the first of its kind in Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II, the UN refugee agency said.  The man was among a group of 54 migrants spotted by a patrol near the southeastern town of Sredets close to the Turkish border, Bulgarian interior ministry official Georgy Kostov said yesterday.

Officers fired warning shots into the air and "a migrant was injured by a ricochet-according to the testimony of one of the three police officers-and succumbed to his injuries on the way to the hospital," he said. The migrants "did not obey" a police order to stop, the official said. "None of the migrants were armed, but they put up resistance." A spokesman for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Bulgaria called the incident "very regrettable" and said it showed that reinforcing borders was not the answer to the crisis.

"This plan for barriers, fences and police cannot solve the problem of desperate people," Boris Cheshirkov told AFP.

'READY TO HELP'

The incident prompted Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to fly home from a summit of European leaders in Brussels where the agreement with Turkey was announced. Under the plan, Turkey agreed to tackle people-smugglers and take measures to keep more of the millions of refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict from crossing by sea to Europe.

In exchange, European leaders agreed to give Ankara more funds to tackle the problem and spead up working on easing visa restrictions on Turkish citizens travelling to Europe. The deal was settled after European Commission officials visited Turkey in a last-ditch bid to persuade the government to back the plan, following a visit by Erdogan to Brussels last week.

European Council President Donald Tusk hailed the pact as a "major step forward" but stressed "an agreement with Turkey only makes sense if it effectively contains the flow of refugees". But yesterday Erdogan jabbed at the EU for its vaunted role in the Syrian refugee crisis. And he asked whether Ankara's long-standing bid for membership of the bloc was being taken seriously. "They announce they'll take in 30,000 to 40,000 refugees and then they are nominated for the Nobel for that. We are hosting two and a half million refugees but nobody cares," Erdogan said.

He complained that Turkey had so far spent $8 billion (seven billion euros) on hosting refugees -- 2.2 million Syrians who fled the four-and-a-half year conflict in their country and also 300,000 Iraqis. "They keep saying 'We can't do without Turkey.' It's very clear but they are not being clear. Then why don't you let Turkey in the EU?" Erdogan said.

Turkey is the main departure point for the more than 600,000 migrants who have entered Europe this year, most of them making the short but dangerous sea crossing to the Greek islands, but some also coming by land.  The crisis has already claimed the lives of over 3,000 migrants this year who drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach the continent in makeshift boats.

A CONTINENT DIVIDED

The EU has been left more divided than ever by the mass migration, especially given fears the passport-free Schengen zone could collapse as countries try to curb the huge numbers of migrants.  A member of the EU but not of Schengen, Bulgaria is on the fringes of the main flow of migrants heading to western Europe through Greece, Macedonia and Serbia.

The country, the poorest in the EU, has however seen tens of thousands of migrants transiting since the beginning of the year.  In a move to buttress its porous 260-kilometre (160-mile) border with Turkey, Bulgaria has built a 30-kilometre razor wire fence along part of it and dispatched some 2,000 border guards, police and army to guard the rest.

Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his National Security cabinet would meet Friday to discuss the closure of the country's Croatian border, after announcing the completion of a new fence there yesterday.  EU and Schengen member Hungary is one of the major transit countries for migrants travelling up through the western Balkans in their quest to reach countries further north such as Germany.

More than 386,000 have crossed into the country so far in 2015, with the number likely to exceed 700,000 by the end of the year, according to Hungarian authorities. In response, the Hungarian government introduced tough anti-immigration laws and sealed its border with Serbia last month, cutting of the main entry point into the EU via the Balkans route. This in turn diverted the flow of migrants toward Croatia.

The new barrier has raised tensions between Budapest and Zagreb, which said the fence was not a solution to the crisis. But Orban's hardline stance toward migrants is supported by fellow EU neighbours Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic who announced Thursday they would provide 150 police reinforcements to help Hungary protect its Serbian border. - AFP