Hungary organise buses to take refugees to Austrian border Friday SEp 04,2015

Hungary late Friday Sep 04,2015 laid on buses to ferry hundreds of desperate refugees who had set off on foot for the Austrian border after being stranded for days in Budapest's main railway station

 

Hungary has become the newest flashpoint as thousands of migrants try to get to Western Europe, particularly Germany, which has said it will no longer deport Syrian refugees and will take in 800,000 people this year.

In the Hungarian capital, a crowd of migrants estimated by police at 2,500, including people in wheelchairs and on crutches, set off determined to get to the Austrian border some 175 kilometres (110 miles) away.
Migrants begin walking towards the Austrian border from Budapest.

Refugee's walk down the side of the motorway as they make their way from Budapest north towards Austria 

Hundreds of migrants walk on the Elisabeth Bridge in Budapest on September 4, 2015

On Friday evening, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief-of-staff Janos Lazar said Hungary would lay on around 100 buses to take migrants to the Austrian border if they wanted.

"The top priority is that Hungary's transport should not be crippled," said Lazar.

Some flashed victory signs as they walked along the M1 motorway leading to Austria while others carried pictures of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recently easing asylum rules for Syrians, as police looked on without intervening.

"We are very happy that something is happening at last. The next stop is Austria. The children are very tired, Hungary is very bad, we have to go somehow," 23-year-old Osama from Syria told 


Note

Some 50,000 migrants arrived in Hungary last month via the western Balkans, with a record 3,300 on Thursday, according to UN figures.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned the EU faced a "defining moment" and called for the mandatory resettlement of 200,000 refugees by EU states.

Some 350,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, with 2,600 dying when rickety boats supplied by ruthless people smugglers sank.