Migrant crisis: Hungary to bus migrants to Austria border

By BBC News

Hungary is to send buses to transport migrants to Austria's border after more than 1,000 began walking there earlier on Friday.

They left Budapest station on foot after a stand-off with police, defying official efforts to take them to reception centres and register them.

Earlier on Friday another group escaped along railway tracks in Bicske, to the west, from a train stopped by police.

European Union states are struggling to agree on how to deal with the crisis.

The surprise announcement by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff late on Friday night followed several days of chaotic scenes.

Janos Lazar said Hungary would offer buses to those walking along the main motorway to Vienna, as well as to migrants still at Budapest's Keleti railway station.

The buses would take people to Hegyeshalom, on the border with Austria.

Hungary had not yet had a response from the Austrian government so he did not know whether they would be allowed in to Austria, he added.

"We are taking this step so Hungary's transportation is not paralyzed during the next 24 hours," Mr Lazar said, according to the Associated Press.

It was unclear whether migrants would be happy to get on the buses, after several hundred were encouraged to get on a train on Thursday that did not then head to Austria.

The BBC's Matthew Price, walking with the migrants, said that as night fell, many continued to walk, but others - including a family with five children - appeared to stop for the night on the hard shoulder, or in adjacent fields.

Hungary has become a major transit nation for people fleeing the Middle East and Africa, seeking to reach north and west Europe.