Austria, Germany to take in refugees bottled up in Hungary
Austria and Germany have agreed to take in hundreds of refugees who broke away from Hungarian police and began marching towards Western Europe after days of being stranded at Budapest’s international train station.
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann announced the decision on Saturday after speaking with his German counterpart Angela Merkel.
Following the announcement, Hungary started providing buses, which would pick up the weary travelers. Reports say the first buses carrying refugees arrived at the Hungary-Austria border on Saturday morning.
The asylum seekers have already made dangerous treks in scorching heat, crawling under barbed wire on Hungary’s southern frontier and facing the hostility of some locals along the way.
On Thursday, more than 1,000 stormed into the Budapest train station when police opened it up to refugees after two days. The decision to shut down the terminus had come after several thousand boarded trains to Austria and Germany on Monday.
However, Hungarian authorities banned the trains from leaving westwards, resulting in chaotic scenes when a train stopped at the northern Hungary town of Bicske near one of the country’s four main camps.
Commenting on the decision to provide buses for the marching refugees, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said, “The situation at Keleti train station, on the highways and on the train lines threatened to shut down part of Hungary’s transportation system, which led to the decision to take the migrants to the Hungarian side of the border.”
Austrian police were, meanwhile, making preparations at main border points, with reception areas and first aid facilities. Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief in easternmost Burgeland Province, said those measures should be sufficient for the initial arrivals.
The United Nations estimates 300,000 people have left the Middle East and Africa for Europe this year, but 2,500 have died in the attempt, the majority during dangerous voyages across the Mediterranean in rickety boats.
On Friday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres criticized the European Union for failing to find a response to the spiraling refugee influx, urging the bloc to accept and distribute up to 200,000 asylum-seekers across the continent as part of a binding program for relocation of refugees.
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