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 As thousands of men, women and children - many fleeing Syria's
civil war - continued to arrive from the east, authorities let
thousands of undocumented people travel on towards Germany, the
favored destination for many.
The influx is a crisis for the European Union, which has eliminated
border controls between 26 "Schengen area" states but requires
asylum seekers to apply in the first EU country they reach -
something that is often ignored as migrants race from the fringes of
the bloc to its more prosperous heart.
In line with EU rules, an Austrian police spokesman said only those
who had not already requested asylum in Hungary would be allowed
through - but the sheer pressure of numbers prevailed, and trains
were allowed to move on.
"Thank God nobody asked for a passport ... No police, no problem,"
said Khalil, 33, an English teacher from Kobani in Syria. His wife
held their sick baby daughter, coughing and crying in her arms, at
the Vienna station where police stood by as hundred of migrants
raced to board trains for Germany.
Khalil said he had bought train tickets in Budapest for Hamburg,
northern Germany, where he felt sure of a better welcome after
traipsing across the Balkans and Hungary.
"Syrians call (Chancellor Angela) Merkel 'Mama Merkel'," he said,
referring to the German leader's relatively compassionate response
so far to the migrant crisis.
Late on Monday, a train from Vienna to Hamburg on which migrants
were traveling was met in Passau, Germany, by police wearing
bullet-proof vests, according to a Reuters witness.
Police entered the train and migrants were asked to accompany them
to be registered. About 40 people were seen on the platform.
Police said they would be taken to a police station for
registration.
CENTRAL CHALLENGE
Merkel, whose country expects some 800,000 migrants this year, said
the crisis could destroy the Schengen open borders accord if other
EU countries did not take a greater share.
"If we don't succeed in fairly distributing refugees then of course
the Schengen question will be on the agenda for many," she told a
news conference in Berlin. "We stand before a huge national
challenge. That will be a central challenge not only for days or
months but for a long period of time."
But it is far from certain her view will prevail when EU ministers
hold a crisis meeting on Sept. 14. Britain, which is outside the
Schengen zone, says the border-free system is part of the problem,
and a bloc of central European countries plans to oppose any binding
quotas.
Refugees who managed to board the trains heading west on Monday
mixed with well-heeled business travelers and tourists, some of whom
were angry over the delays to their journey.
"I have a plane to catch from Vienna Airport. I took the train
because of the road checks and the traffic jam ... and now this? Are
you kidding me?” said Orsolya Jakab, 35, a Hungarian accountant.
Outside Vienna station, thousands of supporters of the migrants
chanted: "Refugees are welcome here".
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"These people need help, they have come from a horrendous situation,
we should not think twice about helping them," said Ottwin Schober,
a retiree from Vienna who had been moved by the discovery of a
truckload of 71 dead migrants in Austria last week.
"WE ESCAPED DEATH"
Austrian authorities have stopped hundreds of refugees and arrested
five traffickers along the highway from Hungary where the abandoned
truck was found near the Hungarian border.
Interior Ministry official Konrad Kogler denied the clampdown, which
includes increased checks on the eastern borders, violated the
Schengen accord on free movement.
"These are not border controls," said Kogler. "It is about ensuring
that people are safe, that they are not dying, on the one hand, and
about traffic security, on the other."
At Munich, in southern Germany, police said around 400 migrants had
arrived on a train from Hungary via Austria.
“There are advanced reports that at least one or two further trains
... are coming which could have a total of three, four or five
hundred refugees on board," police official Juergen Vanselow, told
Reuters TV.
At Munich station in southern Germany, two trains arrived from
Hungary carrying several hundred mostly Syrian refugees.
Men, women and children smiled with relief on reaching German soil,
and police shepherded them from the platform to a station
outbuilding to be registered. They were then taken to waiting buses
outside, to be transferred to a reception center in a former
barracks in the north of the city.
Eighteen-year-old Syrian Mohammad al-Azaawi said he had abandoned
his engineering degree and fled the country after being wounded by a
car bomb. He showed reporters scars on his stomach.
His brother Ahmed said they had paid up to 3,000 euros ($3,365) to
make their way via Turkey, Greece, Madedonia, Serbia, Hungary and
Austria. The family had had to sell their house to raise the money.
"We escaped death in Syria. We want to stay here for a better
future," he said.
(Additional reporting by Marton Dunai, Shadia Nasralla, Anna
McIntosh, Heinz-Peter Bader, Noah Barkin and Michael Shields;
Writing by Robin Pomeroy and Gareth Jones; Editing by Mark
Trevelyan, Toni Reinhold)
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