Watch CBS News

Rush to ID young girl lost amid migrant rush in Croatia

They call her Nina, but no one knows her real name, where she came from or what language she speaks.

Authorities have been struggling to find out the identity of a small girl found in a park in a Croatian town a month ago, believed to be a refugee who got lost in a tide of people passing through the country toward Western Europe.

Officials have invited media to take pictures of the girl, who is about three years old, in the capital of Zagreb to help locate her parents. She was found in the central town of Velika Gorica.

"We have been unable to figure out what language the child speaks," Croatia's Minister of Family Milanka Opacic said.

More than 330,000 asylum-seekers have entered Croatia since mid-September, many of them families with small children.

Meanwhile, France began busing asylum-seekers from elsewhere in Europe to small towns in the French heartland, after months of criticism that French authorities weren't doing their share to take in refugees and other migrants pouring into Europe this year.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that 18 men and one woman who fled Eritrea were being bused Friday from Italy to the Loire Valley region in western France. They were among 200 people France is taking from Italy and Greece this month, 300 next month and 400 in January, the statement said.

France has agreed to take in 30,000 refugees from around Europe as part of EU-wide agreements -- compared with hundreds of thousands in neighboring Germany, and 4 million Syrian refugees taken in by Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.