Austria and Germany yesterday threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted migrants who were bussed to the Hungarian border by a government that had tried to stop them, but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reaching Europe’s frontiers.
Left to walk the last meters into Austria, rain-soaked migrants, many of them refugees from Syria’s civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna, where many said they were resolved to continue on to Germany.
Hundreds of migrants arrived at Munich railway station later yesterday, a witness said.
Photo: EPA
A police spokesman said that about 450 migrants arrived on a special train and they would be escorted onto a city train to take them to an emergency registration center nearby.
Germany said it expected to receive up to 10,000 migrants.
Austrian police said 4,000 had crossed by the morning, but that many more were expected during the day as Europe’s asylum system buckled under the pressure of the continent’s worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
“It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary,” said Omar, who arrived in Vienna with his family and hundreds of other migrants who poured out onto a fenced-off platform and were handed food, drinks and other supplies.
In Budapest, almost emptied of migrants by nightfall on Friday, the main railway station was again filling with newly arrived migrants, but trains to western Europe remained canceled.
So hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border like others had tried on Friday.
After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary’s government deployed more than 100 buses overnight to take thousands of migrants to the Austrian border.
Austria said it had agreed with Germany that it would allow the migrants access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach.
Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags against the rain, long lines of weary migrants, many carrying small, sleeping children, climbed off buses on the Hungarian side of the border and walked into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers.
Waiting Austrians held signs that read: “Refugees welcome.”
“We’re happy. We’ll go to Germany,” said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed.
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