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Hungarian police use tear gas, water cannon to drive violent refugees

Xinhua, September 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

Hungarian police on Hungary's border with Serbia used tear gas and water cannon to drive back refugees from the border fence on Wednesday after a bout of rock-throwing and fence-breaking by asylum-seekers.

Internet news portal Index.hu described the scene as utterly chaotic with children screaming from the tear gas and people running in all directions.

Wire service MTI reported that people locked out of Hungary had begun an offensive against one of the crossings. Television channel M1 showed police using shields and bringing armored vehicles to the border, where they have been patrolling.

According to MTI, the refugees broke through one section of one fence and began throwing things at police. Serbian police observed the incidents but did not interfere.

Several thousand refugees were on the road leading to one border crossing into Roszke, Hungary, where they had set up camp. There are many women and children among them.

Index.hu quoted government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs, who told that armed migrants had launched an attack on the Hungarian border and broken through the fence. "These people really are ready to be violent," Kovacs said.

Gyorgy Bakondi, the prime minister's security advisor, told a border news conference covered by Index.hu that the refugees had issued an ultimatum to the police, demanding that they be let through or would become violent.

Twenty Hungarian police officers were injured, as were two children which refugees threw over the damaged fence, Bakondi said. The children were taken away by ambulance, he added.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called on his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic to help control rowdy refugees, who, he said were attacking Hungarian police from the Serbian side of the border.

Szijjarto, speaking on television news channel M1, charged the media with an anti-Hungary campaign. He said he was curious to see how news reports would manage to show the Hungarian police as aggressors rather than victims despite the images clearly showing that they were attacked. Enditem