Hungarian authorities halt train packed with refugees headed for border

Migrants gather at the railway station in the town of Bicske, Hungary, September 3, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

BUDAPEST - The Hungarian authorities halted a train packed with refugees headed for Austrian border on Thursday morning just outside Budapest, local wire service MTI reported.

Refugees packed the train run by the GYESEV railroad, a small company jointly owned by the Austrian and Hungarian states, in a bid to reach Sopron on the Austrian border.

Police are moving occupants by bus to a nearby reception facility.

The train pulled out of Budapest's Eastern (Keleti) Railway Station sometime after ten o'clock local time as Janos Lazar, the minister in charge of the prime minister's office said police would be checking for documents on the moving train.

Lazar told a news conference that police were on board the train and would see to it that the European Union's Schengen regulations, which require travel documents from citizens of non-EU countries, would be respected and only people with proper documents would be allowed onward.

Lazar said that refugees had been refusing to register in Hungary despite EU regulations requiring them to register in the country where they first entered the community.

He also said that Hungary was the victim of Germany's miscommunication, which reportedly said a week ago that it would receive all refugees and grant them unlimited residence.

That statement triggered the flood of people, Lazar said. He called on the staff of Germany's embassy in Budapest to visit the Eastern Railway Station and explain Germany's position to the crowds stranded there.

Lazar called the situation the most serious crisis affecting Hungary since the former Yugoslav war in the 1990s, adding that the current situation proved that Hungary needed to close down its southern border, an exterior European Union border.