PHOTO: Policemen struggled to pull the family off the train tracks.
Asylum seekers have thrown themselves onto train tracks and fled from police trying to take them to a reception centre in Hungary, as authorities sought to end a standoff that has become symbolic of a European asylum system brought to breaking point.
With the government promising to close the country off to migrants by September 15, chaos broke out after a train bound for Hungary's border with Austria was stopped some 35 kilometres outside of Budapest in the town of Bicske, where Hungary has an asylum seeker reception centre.
Riot police ordered them off, but many asylum seekers resisted, laying on the railway line or fleeing. Some wrestled with police, trying to get back on board.
Those who refused to disembark banged on the windows of the train and shouted "No camp, no camp!"A family — a man, his wife and their toddler — made their way on the track next to the train and lay down in protest. It took a dozen riot police wrestling with the man to get them up again.
The train left from Budapest's main railway station on Thursday morning after police, who for two days had barred entry to more than 2,000 asylum seekers, stepped aside and a crowd surged past.
Many believed they were heading for Austria, Germany and beyond, nearing the end of a sometimes perilous journey from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Exhausted and confused, they crammed into a waiting train, clinging to doors and squeezing their children through open carriage windows.
Trains to Vienna and Germany were cancelled, but domestic trains, many of them heading for border towns in western Hungary, were leaving.
"We want to go to Germany but that train in the station, maybe it goes nowhere. We heard it may go to a camp. So we will stay out here and wait," Ysra Mardini, a 17-year-old from the Syrian capital Damascus, said.
Asylum seekers arriving in Vienna from Hungary will not be checked or registered and can continue their onward journeys across Europe, the police chief in Austria's capital said.
Austrian rail operator OeBB said several trains had left Budapest for Sopron, which is near the Austrian border and connected to Vienna via regional rail lines.
No intercity trains were running from Budapest to Vienna, unlike on Tuesday when asylum seekers packed trains hoping to make it to Germany or beyond.
"What we certainly can't do is check all those people coming through, establish all their identities, or possibly even arrest them — we can't do this, and we have no plans to do this," Vienna police chief Gerhard Puerstl said.
Asked if the migrants would be allowed to continue their journey, Mr Puerstl said "yes — of course, we will ensure that everything is orderly, there is no question of that," adding there was no point in shuttling people back and forth in trains.
PHOTO: An asylum seeker pulls a boy inside a train through a window at the Keleti train station in Budapest.
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