Hundreds of migrants stormed Budapest’s main international rail station after police reopened it yesterday, in an escalating refugee crisis seared into European hearts by horrifying pictures of a drowned Syrian toddler.
Chaos erupted as crowds of people burst into the flashpoint station and rushed toward a standing train, with Hungarian police seemingly absent following a two-day standoff with migrants trying to head to Germany and Austria.
The scenes of confusion in a deeply divided EU came as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban held urgent talks in Brussels on dealing with the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Photo: AP
“There is a divide ... between the east and the west of the EU,” EU President Donald Tusk said ahead of the meeting with Orban.
The EU is riven by frictions between transit nations where the migrants arrive — mainly Greece, Italy and Hungary — and those where they hope to seek asylum, mainly in northern and western Europe.
France, Italy and Germany urged a rethink of European asylum rules to ensure “a fair distribution” of migrants throughout the 28-member bloc, as tensions soared between European states over how to tackle the huge influx.
In Britain, where Prime Minister David Cameron’s government has accepted just 216 Syrian refugees and a lower number of asylum seekers in proportion to its population than most EU countries, tens of thousands of people signed petitions demanding change.
Pressure for change was increased by the images of a tiny child lying face down in the surf at one of Turkey’s main tourist resorts, putting a human face to the dangers faced by tens of thousands of desperate people who risk life and limb to get to Europe.
Wearing a red T-shirt and blue shorts, the child — identified as three-year-old Aylan Kurdi — is believed to be one of least 12 Syrians who died when their boats sank trying to reach Greece.
A Canadian newspaper reported that the family of the boy and his five-year-old brother, who also drowned, were trying to get to Canada from the Syrian flashpoint town of Kobane after fleeing to Turkey last year to escape Islamic State extremists.
The bleak image spread like lightning through social media and dominated front pages from Spain to Sweden, with commentators unanimous it had rammed home the horrors faced by those fleeing war and conflict in the Middle East and Africa.
Circulating with the Turkish hashtag “#KiyiyaVuranInsanlik” (“Humanity washed ashore”), the picture made it to Twitter’s top world trending topics.
“Tiny victim of a human catastrophe,” said Britain’s Daily Mail — which had previously spoken of a “swarm” of migrants trying to get into the country — while Italy’s La Repubblica tweeted the words: “One photo to silence the world.”
The Sun newspaper, Britain’s most read, urged Cameron to take in more refugees.
The UN Security Council said late on Wednesday it was discussing a draft resolution to address the crisis that diplomats said may allow an EU naval force to seize ships operated by migrant smugglers in international waters.
More than 350,000 people have made the perilous journey from North Africa to Europe this year, many trafficked by people smugglers from war-torn Libya, where nearly 3,000 migrants were rescued on Wednesday close to the coast.
In Hungary, a key arrival point for tens of thousands of migrants entering the EU, with some 50,000 entering the country last month alone, Budapest’s Keleti station has become a symbol of the crisis.
Hungary allowed several thousand to board trains bound for Austria and Germany on Monday, but the following day the station was closed to anyone without an EU passport or a valid visa.
The move left about 2,000 men, women and children stranded around the station or in a makeshift refugee camp beneath the station and scuffles broke out between police and migrants on Tuesday.
Yesterday, hundreds tried to get on board one train, pushing, shoving and fighting with each other to get on, after the station reopened.
The situation is also becoming increasingly desperate on Europe’s sea borders after a dramatic spike in the numbers of migrants leaving Turkey by sea for Greece over the past week, among them the tiny toddler whose death has caused such outrage.
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