Hungary has reopened Budapest’s Keleti train station for migrants but cancelled trains to Western Europe.
This has created confusion among the refugees seeking to travel to Germany, as they fought to board the trains with the hope of reaching their destination country.
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Signs have been put up and announcements made that the international trains are cancelled indefinitely.
The crisis situation began earlier this week when Hungary allowed thousands of migrants to move to Germany and Vienna without the mandatory checking of their visa and passport.
Following protests from the other Schengen countries, Hungary sought to control the situation by closing Budapest’s main train station on Tuesday.
This triggered protests from the refugees from the middle-eastern countries, heading mostly to Germany.
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By GlobalDataGermany has been bracing up to accommodate 800,000 migrants this year, four times more than last year, as chancellor Angela Merkel announced the country’s intention to relax norms for welcoming refugees from Syria.
On Thursday, Hungary blamed Germany for the situation.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff Janos Lazar was quoted by Reuters as saying: "This is because Germany…more than a week ago told Syrians that Germany awaited them, inviting them to the laid table."
Thousands of people have been fleeing the war-torn Middle-eastern countries of Syria, Iraq and others in dinghies, boats and ships, in their attempt to reach Europe.
According to the UN, around 40,000 people are getting displaced from the region every day.
Last week, the bodies of 70 Syrian asylum seekers were found abandoned in a truck near the border of Austria with Hungary.
Asylum seekers camped around Calais on the French coast stopped a Eurostar train on its way from France to the UK on Tuesday night, stranding more than 2,000 passengers for up to five hours. They have been seeking entry into the UK.
According to reports, the crisis is prompting the Schengen countries to reconsider their borderless travel policy.
The images of a three-year-old toddler’s body that washed ashore Turkey on Wednesday, have created ripples across the world, prompting European leaders to react to the situation.
Orban is expected to meet with the leaders of the other EU members to discuss the matter, even as Italy and Germany have been advocating a fairer distribution of migrant responsibility among all the European countries.
Image: Migrants at a refugee camp in Calais, France. Photo: © European Union 2013-EP / Ahmad Abdo.
