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| Refugee crisis: Crossing the border to Austria and Germany (Vide below) |
Staff correspondent, September 6, 2015, NewsCrunch
Fed up with the inefficient Hungarian authorities, who were reluctant to help them, Syrian refugees started walking towards Austrian border on Saturday night.
It was an 170 km walk and the refugees were already exhausted and out of reserves. Carrying their children and meager belongings, they started off on their feet.
They were encouraged by the announcements of Germany, Austria and the UK to open up their borders.
As thousands of refugees started pouring on the highway in the rain, the Hungarian officials were forced to send buses to pick up some of them.
From Austrian border the refugees were taken by trains and buses to Vienna, Munich and other cities in Austria and Germany. Nearly 20,000 refugees have entered Germany and Austria in the last 24 hours.
For a change, Europeans usually wary of refugees, welcomed them with placards and with supplies of immediate relief materials.
Their hand was forced to some extent by the sheer scale of the humanitarian crisis, which was brought home by the unfortunate death of the three-year-old Syrian child, Aylan Kurdi.