Hungary police arrest most of 300 refugees fleeing camp

Hungarian police say they have arrested most of the 300 refugees who had fled a crowded refugee confinement center in Roszke’s train station on Hungary's southern border with Serbia.

The police said on Friday that another 2,300 asylum-seekers are still inside the center, some for as long as three days, awaiting permission to board one of the trains headed from Hungary to Austria, or preferably Germany.

About 300 refugees had earlier in the day broken out of confinement in the refugee camp.

"According to police estimates, 300 illegal migrants at 11:30 (0930 GMT) broke through the fence of the Roszke migrant collection point in two groups and ran toward the M5 motorway," Hungary police said on Friday.

Elsewhere in Hungary, about a thousand other refugees pushed past police barricades in the capital Budapest to set off for the western border on foot. Hungary said it would effectively seal the southern border to migrants as of September 15.

Meanwhile, Hungary's parliament on Friday introduced emergency anti-migration laws, in a tough response to the record number of refugees and asylum-seekers crossing the EU member's border as they try to reach western Europe.

The new measures include three-year jail terms for people climbing over the newly built razor wire fence on the border with Serbia, as well as new border "transit zones" to hold asylum seekers while their applications are being processed.

Almost all the refugee arrivals into the European Union are through eastern European countries like Hungary and Serbia or southern countries like Greece and Italy, where asylum-seekers land in the passport-free Schengen area and then head for northern European countries like the UK, Germany and Sweden.

Northern countries say the EU rules require that asylum claims be dealt with in the country they first arrive. However, frontline countries complain they lack the resources to take care of all the refugees.

This large discrepancy between the EU rules and how the refugees are treated on the ground has aggravated their already miserable situation.

For the Syrian toddler, a funeral

The father of a drowned Syrian toddler whose heartbreaking images of his lifeless body, in a t-shirt, shorts and shoes, on a Turkish beach shocked the world returned to his home in the Syrian flashpoint border town of Kobani on Friday to bury his three-year-old son, Aylan Kurdi.

Abdullah Kurdi said his family of four were trying to get to Canada when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea and his two sons Aylan and Ghaleb "slipped through my hands."

"As a father who lost his children, I want nothing for myself from this world. All I want is that this tragedy in Syria immediately ends," he said on his way to Kobani, which was devastated in clashes between the Takfiri Daesh terrorists and Kurdish fighters.

Father to two drowned kids, husband to a 35-year-old wife taken away from him at sea, Kurdi bid farewell to his other son and his wife as well at the funeral.

European apathy

International criticism has arisen following European leaders' inaction toward the refugee crisis.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned that the EU faced a "defining moment" after little Aylan's death and called for the mandatory resettlement of 200,000 refugees by EU states.

With tensions growing, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said Thursday they had agreed that the EU should now require member states to take in a fixed number of migrants.

EU foreign ministers were to meet later on Friday in Luxembourg to discuss the crisis, which has split the bloc between countries like Germany, advocating greater solidarity, and mainly eastern nations such as Hungary that have taken a hardline approach by erecting a fence on the border with Serbia to keep out migrants.

Open animosity

Hungary's right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday stirred controversy by saying Hungary did not want Muslim refugees.

He warned other leaders that Europe's Christian roots were at risk by the influx of refugees from Syria.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused European leaders of turning the Mediterranean into a "cemetery."

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Europe's refugee crisis was an "absolutely expected" result of the West's policies in the Middle East and that he had personally warned of the consequences.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok on Friday, Putin said Russia has frequently warned of major problems for Europe as a result of the West’s wrong policies as well as the spread of terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa.  

“We in Russia … a few years ago said it straight that pervasive problems would emerge if our so-called Western partners continue maintaining their flawed ... foreign policy, especially in the regions of the Muslim world, Middle East, [and] North Africa, which they pursue to date,” Putin said.

More fatalities

At least 30 more refugees fleeing from war and persecution in the Middle East and North Africa are feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday that some 91 survivors had been rescued by the Italian coast guard on Thursday. The IOM said a boat was carrying between 120 and 140 people when it began to deflate, sparking panic and tipping some people overboard.

Officials say about 350,000 refugees have crossed the Mediterranean this year. About 2,600 people have died on the perilous journey.

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