LIVE BLOG: Refugee crisis in Europe
- 4 suspects arrested in connection to trafficking, drowning of 12 Syrian migrants, including Aylan Kurdi
- Migrants and refugees pulled of Austria-bound train near Serbian border; police try to put passengers in buses to go to refugee camps
- Conservative MPs urge UK government to resettle more refugees in country
- Drowned child who became face of migrant crisis identified as Aylan Kurdi, allegedly from Kobane in Syria
- More than 200,000 people sign petition in UK calling for country to accept more refugees
Live Updates
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has warned that refugees who threatened to "overrun" Europe would undermine the continent's "Christian values".
"We must not forget that those who are coming in have been brought up under a different religion and represent a profoundly different culture," he wrote in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
"The majority are not Christians but Muslims. That is an important question because Europe and European culture have Christian roots.
"Or is it not already, and in itself, alarming that Europe's Christian culture is barely able to uphold Europe's own Christian values?"
After UK Prime Minister David Cameron said last night that taking in more people is not the answer to the EU’s refugee crisis, which involves many Syrians, Conservative MPs are putting pressure on the country to take in more.
Since Syria's civil war started in 2011, the UK has focused on offering humanitarian aid rather than taking in large numbers of refugees for resettlement.
The UK has taken in at little under 4,200 refugees, most of whom came to the UK independently and then claimed asylum. Another 187 were relocated as part of the UK's Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, launched in 2014.
“We cannot be the generation that fails this test of humanity,” tweeted Nicola Blackwood, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. “We must do all we can.”
Tom Tugendhat, MP for Tonbridge, Edenbridge and Malling, told the Press Association: "I've spoken to many in west Kent who want us to do more and I agree with them. Our common humanity demands action at home and abroad."
Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, also tweeted her thoughts:
AFP:
A train carrying between 200 and 300 migrants left Budapest's main international train station on Thursday and headed toward the Austrian border, after authorities reopened the station, an AFP reporter said.
The train was due to split, with three carriages due to travel to Szonbathely and the rest to Sopron, both near Hungary's western border with Austria.
The part going to Sopron was packed with people standing in the corridors. It was unclear whether the trains would arrive at their intended destinations.
On Tuesday Hungarian authorities stopped migrants taking trains to Austria and Germany after thousands travelled to these countries.
The next day, it closed Budapest's Keleti station to migrants, leaving some 2,000 people stranded and leading to a tense standoff with demonstrations and scuffles.
Then early Thursday the station was fully re-opened and hundreds of people stormed inside, cramming into trains. Hungarian Railways said however that there would be no trains going to western Europe.
French Prime Minsiter Manuel Valls has tweeted a photo of Aylan Kurdi and called for urgent action across the EU.
EU President Donald Tusk on Thursday called on EU states to take on 100,000 refugees, to reduce pressure on frontline countries.
"Accepting more refugees is an important gesture of real solidarity. Fair distribution of at least 100,000 refugees among the EU states is what in fact we need today," Tusk told a press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
He added mild praise for Hungary's approach to the crisis saying that "not everyone is a fan of Hungary's action but one thing is clear, Hungary took action to protect EU borders" but warned that it would be "unforgivable if Europe split into advocates of containment symbolised by Hungary's fence and advocates of full openness."
AFP:
Libya's coastguards said they rescued more than 100 African migrants on an overloaded rubber dinghy bound for Europe that was about to sink off the coast of Tripoli on Thursday.
"We rescued 104 African migrants, including 14 women. Most of them were from Sierra Leone and Nigeria," Lieutenant Mohamad Dandi of the Tripoli coastguard told AFP.
He said the rescue operation took place shortly after midnight at a distance of seven nautical miles off Garabulli, 50 kilometres east of the Libyan capital.
The migrants were on a Zodiac built to carry up to 35 people and the boat was about to start sinking because of a puncture when the coastguards intervened, he said.
The migrants were seen disembarking at a naval station in Tripoli.
Turkish authorities arrested four suspected human traffickers over the deaths of 12 Syrian migrant, including 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, in two boat sinkings on Wednesday, the Dogan News Agency reports.
The four, all Syrian nationals aged between 30 and 41, are accused of "causing the death of more than one person" and "trafficking migrants", the Dogan news agency reported.
They are to appear in court later today.
Peter Bouckaert, Emergency Director at Human Rights Watch, explained to Middle East Eye why he shared the now infamous photo of drown Syrian child Aylan Kurdi:
Some say the picture is too offensive to share online or print in our newspapers. But what I find offensive is that drowned children are washing up on our shorelines, when more could have been done to prevent their deaths.
It was not an easy decision to share a brutal image of a drowned child. But I care about these children as much as my own. Maybe if Europe’s leaders did too, they would try to stem this ghastly spectacle.
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/dispatches-why-i-shared-horrific-photo-drowned-syrian-child-497784738#sthash.HkCefZl0.dpuf"Some say the picture is too offensive to share online or print in our newspapers. But what I find offensive is that drowned children are washing up on our shorelines, when more could have been done to prevent their deaths."
"It was not an easy decision to share a brutal image of a drowned child. But I care about these children as much as my own. Maybe if Europe’s leaders did too, they would try to stem this ghastly spectacle."
Several hundred migrants and refugees are refusing to get off a train in Hungary and be taken to a refugee camp, according to AFP.
The migrants had thought the train would take them to near the Austrian border, but it stopped at Bicske near one of Hungary's four main camps.
Many of the migrants protested, shouting "Germany! Germany!" and holding placards saying "Help" and "SOS".
Sky News released harrowing footage of a man pulling his family on to a train tracks:
Among mounting international outrage over the spiralling refugee crisis in Europe, much of the anger has been directed towards the Arab Gulf states, who so far have taken in few or no refugees from Syria.
The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) - Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates - have, according to Amnesty International, “offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”
Numerous cartoons have circulated social media criticising the inactivity of the Gulf states over the crisis, many using the image of drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi:
European Union President Donald Tusk on Thursday said that division between eastern and western EU member states were complicating efforts to resolve the EU's migrant crisi.
"There is a divide...between the east and the west of the EU. Some member states are thinking about containing the wave of migration, symbolised by the Hungarian (border) fence," Tusk said, speaking to a conference of EU ambassadors.
"Others want solidarity in advocating a so-called obligatory basis for quotas. The key challenge is to find for them all a common, yet ambitious, denominator," he said prior to talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
He added that he was "working with leaders to build a new consensus among governments on the EU response."
"The first goal to ensure people in need of international protection receive it. Second, we must gain more control of mass population flows."
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday insisted the migrant crisis was a German problem, not a European one as he defended his government's handling of thousands of refugees flooding into his country, shortly after hundreds of refugees and migrants stormed a train at Budapest's reopened main international railway station, which has become a flashpoint for people trying to head to western Europe via Hungary.
"The problem is not a European problem, the problem is a German problem," Orban told a press conference with European Parliament President Martin Schulz in Brussels.
"Nobody wants to stay in Hungary, neither in Slovakia, nor Poland, nor Estonia. All want to go to Germany. Our job is just to register them."
"We have clear cut regulations at the European level," he added. "German Chancellor (Angela Merkel)...said yesterday that nobody could leave Hungary without being registered."