When migrants and money from the Middle East collided in central Belgrade last week, there could only be one winner.

On Wednesday, bulldozers flattened the Miksaliste aid centre, where since last summer volunteers provided thousands of migrants with everything from food, clothes and basic medical help to games and cartoon screenings for children.

Miksaliste had to go, local officials said, during demolition work clearing ground for a vast development called Belgrade Waterfront.

It promises to turn one million square metres of land beside the Sava river into a dazzling “city within a city”, with soaring apartment and office blocks, hotels, a shopping mall and the tallest skyscraper in the Balkans, all set amid fine parkland.

Despite protests from many Belgraders who see the project as a white elephant that will feed corruption and serve a wealthy elite, the scheme has strong backing from Serbia's government, which expects most of the €3.5 billion costs to be covered by investors from Abu Dhabi.

The plan spelled doom for Miksaliste, and neighbouring cafes, shops and other small business that had started to revitalise Belgrade's Savamala district. "We still find it hard to believe that something like this is possible, even in Serbia, " Mikser, a local cultural group that helped run Miksaliste, said on its blog.

“We’ve tried to understand where that rush is coming from, why all the bullying . . . Someone is obviously eager to expel us brutally, without any dialogue, conversation or understanding for the good work we’ve delivered for the past nine months.”

A place where migrants could get some food, rest and advice, while their children played safely, is now rubble – leaving new arrivals at a loss.

Dozens of migrants still reach Belgrade each day, entering Serbia from Macedonia or Bulgaria across borders officially closed to them.

Some find their own way, but many use smugglers who charge a few hundred euro to lead them towards poorly guarded stretches of border, and thousands of euro for a promise of guides and transport to western Europe.

“We’re back to what was happening before the Balkan route was ‘legalised’,” said Vladimir Sjekloca, project manager at Belgrade’s Asylum Information Centre, a small office busy with migrants seeking advice and using computers.

Migrants were allowed to travel relatively freely from Greece to Germany between last August and March, when Balkan states reimposed border controls, stranding thousands of people.

Illegal routes

A controversial EU-

Turkey

deal to stop migrants crossing the Mediterranean is having an impact on numbers reaching Greek shores, but many of the 50,000 people stuck in Greece are still trying to move north, and new illegal routes are appearing.

Every night, from a makeshift camp of about 10,000 people at the northern Greek village of Idomeni, migrants trek for several hours to bypass border guards and cross woods and streams into Macedonia. Then, usually with smugglers’ help, they head north through the country and try to sneak into Serbia. Tightening controls around the Mediterranean have also increased the attraction of the overland trek from Turkey to Bulgaria, despite numerous reports of migrants being abused by police, smugglers and civilian vigilantes.

“We walked through Turkey and Bulgaria but near Serbia we were stopped,” said Majid, an Afghan travelling with his wife and two young children.

"The police had dogs and I was bitten on the leg. They sent us back, but we tried again and made it. We arrived here last night," he said, as he huddled with his family under a tarpaulin in a small park near Belgrade's train and bus stations. "We are going to Hungary and then Germany. Maybe we leave today."

He would not say how he planned to travel, but it is easy to spot Afghan, Pakistani and Arab “touts” working for local smuggling gangs in the park.

“There is no proper registration and protection system for migrants in Serbia,” said Rados Djurovic, head of Belgrade’s Asylum Protection Centre.

“Even those who apply for asylum fall through holes . . . and are seen as ‘semi-criminal’. They end up in a grey zone that is very dangerous for them, and leaves them very vulnerable to criminal groups.”

The smugglers take migrants to Serbia’s border with Hungary, where police say about 100 people on average try to cross a security fence each day. “The idea that you can stop people with a fence in the centre of Europe is an illusion,” Djurovic said. “Having migrants sleeping in the streets could become a permanent situation.”