EUROPE-MIGRANTS/GERMANY ARRIVALS Migrants arrive in Germany after travelling through Hungary

Record ID: 141803

  • Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/GERMANY ARRIVALS Migrants arrive in Germany after travelling through Hungary
  • Date: 5th September 2015
  • Summary: MUNICH, GERMANY (SEPTEMBER 5, 2015) (REUTERS) TRAIN ARRIVING AT PLATFORM SURROUNDED BY POLICE POLICE MANNING THE DOORS AS THEY OPEN POLICE AND AUTHORITIES WAITING MIGRANTS GETTING OFF THE TRAIN POLICE TELLING A FAMILY TO GET ONTO THE WAITING LOCAL TRAIN (TO THE REGISTRATION CENTRE) POLICE OUTSIDE THE TRAIN MIGRANTS BOARDING THE LOCAL TRAIN (TO THE REGISTRATION CENTRE) YOUNG MIGRANT BOY TRYING ON A POLICEMAN'S HAT BEFORE BOARDING THE LOCAL TRAIN WITH HIS FATHER POLICE WAITING AS TRAIN LEAVES
  • Embargoed: 20th September 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA76C222AOW05EEY1738FJFDF86
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted migrants on Saturday (September 5), bussed to the Hungarian border by a right-wing government that had tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reaching Europe's frontiers.
    Left to walk the last yards into Austria, rain-soaked migrants, many of them refugees from Syria's civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna and on to Germany.
    German police said the first 450 of up to 10,000 migrants expected on Saturday had arrived on a special train in Munich from Austria.
    Police in Austria said many thousands would pass through during the day, highlighting the continent's worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
    After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary's government deployed over 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.
    Hungary has insisted the bus rides were a one-off, even as hundreds more migrants assembled in Budapest on Saturday, part of a seemingly relentless surge through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece.
    For days, several thousand camped outside Budapest's main railway station, where trains to western Europe were cancelled as the government insisted all those entering Hungary be registered and their asylum applications processed in the country as per EU rules.
    But on Friday (September 4), in separate rapid-fire developments, hundreds broke out of a teeming camp on Hungary's frontier with Serbia, escaped a stranded train, and took to the highway by foot chanting "Germany, Germany!"
    The government appeared to throw in the towel, ordering over 100 buses to take them to the border.
    Arriving at a Vienna railway station on Saturday, migrants were met by announcements for Germany-bound trains in Arabic as well as German.
    The scenes were emblematic of a crisis -- about 350,000 refugees and migrants have reached the border of the European Union this year -- that has left the 28-nation EU groping for solutions amid sharp divisions over burden-sharing.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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