EU grapples with migrant crisis
Hungarian police blocked hundreds of migrants from boarding trains to western Europe from Budapest's main rail station yesterday, as figures showed more than 350,000 have risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean this year.
As hundreds of police, some in riot gear, moved people out of Keleti station, statistics from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) revealed the scale of the crisis in Europe which is facing the biggest movement of people since World War II.
IOM figures show over 234,770 migrants have landed in Greece alone this year -- more than the entire Europe-wide figure for 2014 which was 219,000.
At least 2,600 died on the journey, drowning or suffocating in dangerous or unseaworthy boats, it said. Another 114,276 made it to Italy, while most of the others were split between Spain and Malta.
In a separate statement, the UN children's agency (UNICEF) said 80 percent of those arriving in Macedonia, a major transit point on the route to western Europe, were refugees from the bloody civil war in Syria.
A third of them were women and children, and one in every eight women was pregnant, the agency said, indicating that an estimated 100,000 people had passed through the country since June.
Stories of refugees dying in horrific conditions inside rickety boats or crammed into lorries have become an almost weekly occurrence, with European Council President Donald Tusk yesterday saying the bloc's main priority was "preventing migrants from losing their lives" en route to safety.
Meanwhile, around two hundred refugees were locked in a standoff with police outside Budapest's Keleti station after they were prevented from travelling to western Europe, an AFP correspondent said.
The ban was enforced just 24 hours after police had unexpectedly allowed people stuck for days in makeshift refugee camps to leave the Hungarian capital, with hundreds surging onto trains bound for Germany and Austria, despite many not having EU visas.
The sudden movement of people saw the highest number of migrants entering Austria in a single day this year, with police saying 3,650 arriving in Vienna by train on Monday. Many of the migrants continued on to Germany, which last week eased asylum restrictions for Syrian refugees.
German police said a record 2,200 asylum-seekers had turned up in Bavaria by yesterday morning. An unprecedented number of migrants have also arrived in Belgium in recent weeks. Sweden also said on Tuesday that the number of weekly asylum requests was nearing historic levels.
The record influx of refugees and migrants is Europe's "greatest challenge" for the coming years, Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declared yesterday during talks in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The escalating situation has divided the member bloc ahead of emergency talks on September 14.
At the heart of the crisis lies the question over how to distribute the migrants across the EU and help relieve pressure on so-called "frontline" nations where migrants arrive by sea or land.
Much-flouted EU rules, known as the Dublin regulation, stipulate that refugees should be processed in the first country they reach.
But bloc member Hungary, where 50,000 migrants arrived in August, has said it cannot host so many newcomers, and has built a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia to halt the influx.
France's top diplomat has slammed the barrier as "scandalous", while Austria accused Hungary of being "sloppy" in its application of the Dublin rules, prompting a diplomatic spat with Budapest.
The Hungarian government yesterday summoned the ambassadors of both countries to explain the remarks.
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