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1st LD Writethru: First Hungarian bus with refugees arrives at Austrian border

Xinhua, September 5, 2015 Adjust font size:

A bus carrying a few refugees from Hungary arrived at the Austrian border, media reported early Saturday.

Germany and Austria agreed to allow refugees to enter their countries from Hungary.

Before consulting with his German counterpart Angela Merkel, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over the phone late Friday that the two Western European countries would allow refugees to arrive from Hungary, Hungarian News Agency MTI reported in the small hours of Saturday.

Hungary, which has been witnessing a severe crisis because of the influx of Syrian refugees, announced on Friday it would send thousands of refugees by bus to the border with Austria.

Some buses filled with refugees left the Budapest Eastern (Keleti) Railway Station right after midnight and took them to the Austrian border.

The Central Operative Corps of the Hungarian government offered to pick up refugees and take them by bus to the border at Hegyeshalom, the minister in charge of the prime minister's office, Janos Lazar, announced at an unscheduled news conference Friday evening.

As more and more Syrian war refugees have flocked in, Hungary has experienced a chaotic situation with hundreds of refugees walking along the motorway to Vienna and hundreds more camped out at the railway station, demanding to be allowed to travel to Germany.

The corps would send buses overnight to the Eastern (Keleti) Railway Station and to the refugees walking along the M1 motorway towards Vienna to offer to take them to the border crossing, Razar said.

Lazar said it was vital to prevent Hungary's transportation systems from becoming paralyzed in the next 24 hours, and the halting of international trains and restrictions on motorway vehicle traffic to keep the refugees safe was drastically slowing traffic.

Hungarian national police chief Karoly Papp estimated the number of refugees walking on the motorway at 1,200, saying that another 300 people were walking on the tracks of the main rail line to Vienna, which meant all trains would be halted.

Several hundred refugees apparently had enough of life in the shadow of the Eastern Railway Station after all international trains were canceled and announced Friday afternoon that they were walking to Vienna in their bid to reach Germany. Endi