Sept. 05--REPORTING FROM BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Thousands of weary but relieved refugees arrived at Hungary's border with Austria on Saturday, brought there by the Hungarian government after it threw up its hands and decided to give the Syrians passage through the country rather than keep them in Budapest against their will.
By mid-afternoon, hundreds of migrants started to arrive in Germany, their hoped-for destination, on specially chartered trains. At the railway station in the southern German city of Munich, refugees flashed thumbs-up signs and raised their arms in celebration as local residents greeted them with applause and gifts of bottled water, candy and stuffed animals for the children.
Buses organized by the Hungarian government had begun dropping asylum seekers off at the border with Austria during the night. Many of the Syrians had been walking through Hungary for hours, setting off on foot after authorities shut down the main railway station in Budapest, where the refugees had set up a tent city and waited for days to get out.
Many of the migrants are determined to get to Austria and Germany, whose leaders said early Saturday that they would let refugees in unimpeded from Hungary, which does not want them.
Witnesses at the border reported jubilation by refugees who crossed into Austria, where Red Cross workers were on hand to help with supplies and other needs. The crowds included young children, pregnant women and elderly people in wheelchairs or walking with extreme difficulty.
Many of the refugees are expected to continue on to Vienna and then Germany. Munich is preparing for the arrival of thousands over the next few days.
But the standoff with the Hungarian government may not be over, let alone the monumental migrant crisis facing Europe, the biggest since World War II. A spokesman for Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the buses were a one-off measure sparked by concerns that the refugees who started walking from Budapest on Friday presented a safety hazard.
"That was an extraordinary situation when thousands of people started marching on one of the busiest not only Hungarian but international motorways, blocking traffic," Zoltan Kovacs, the spokesman, told the BBC.
By midday Saturday, the sprawling encampment at Budapest's Keleti station had dwindled to a few hundred people, most of them hoping to get buses to the border.
Jalal Jawish, traveling with his wife and infant daughter, said their five-day sojourn in Hungary had been "horrible, the worst yet."
Jawish, from the Syrian city of Aleppo, said he was taken to a camp at Debrecen, outside Budapest. Authorities finally released the refugees after a near-riot, he said. He was hoping to be bused to Austria.
"The journey has been so bad," said 45-year-old electrician Hassan Mohamed, also from Aleppo. Sheltering first in Turkey, he had wondered if he should make the voyage alone and then send for his family. But his wife and three school-age children refused, telling him, "We must live or die together."
Kovacs cited the "increasing resistance" of migrants to cooperating with Hungarian authorities who tried to register or send them to camps set up to process new arrivals. In what's become a bitter war of words, Kovacs continued to blame Germany humanitarianism for the mass movement of migrants through Hungary, following Berlin's pledge to welcome as many as 800,000 refugees fleeing war in Syria and other countries.
"The fundamental problem is still the pull factor that is being transmitted from Germany and Austria," he said, adding that Hungary was upholding its duty to protect the external borders of the European Union.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel insists that her country is doing no more and no less than its legal and moral duty in giving asylum seekers a fair hearing. If the people arriving in Europe are deemed to qualify for sanctuary, then they must be given it.
"The right to political asylum has no limits on the number of asylum seekers," Merkel said in an interview published Saturday.
She added that Germany, Europe's biggest economy and home to 80 million people, had the "strength to do what is necessary."
The Hungarian government has come in for widespread criticism for its treatment of the refugees, who Prime Minister Orban says are unwanted because most are Muslims whose presence would threaten Europe's Christian identity.
After shutting down the railway station in Budapest, Hungarian authorities also essentially duped hundreds of migrants into boarding trains that they thought were heading to Austria and Germany but that instead took them to a camp about 20 miles away.
That raised suspicions among some refugees that the buses being organized by the government to take them to the border with Austria were another trap. But in the end, many boarded in hope, and found themselves getting to where they wanted to go: out of Hungary.
Their arrival at the frontier capped a remarkable day in which as many as 1,200 people, sick of being confined to the Budapest train station, began an exodus on foot. A huge column of refugees snaked through the Hungarian capital, stopping traffic in some places.
They moved fast, traveling as far as 30 miles before darkness fell.
Officials announced late Friday that buses would be dispatched to take people to the border. Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said soon afterward that his country and Germany were prepared to receive all those coming in from Hungary.
The group reaching Austria early Saturday may be just the beginning of a huge wave. An estimated 340,000 people fleeing violence, persecution or poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa have crossed into Europe this year, with little sign that the numbers will abate any time soon.
Thousands are traversing the Balkan nations and then spilling into Hungary on their way to Germany, which has pledged to accept more refugees than all of the other 27 EU countries combined. Hungary, by contrast, is building a fence with razor wire along its nearly 110-mile border with Serbia to keep migrants out.
Germany and France have called for a refugee quota system to distribute the burden more fairly among EU nations. But Central and Eastern European states such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic oppose such measures.
Staff writers Chu reported from London and King from Budapest. Special correspondent Hassan reported from Budapest.
