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Stuck in Budapest: migrants bed down for second night outside railway station

Hundreds of migrants, blocked from travelling to Germany by train, have bedded down for a second night outside Budapest’s main Keleti railway station. Hungary is the main arrival point for those crossing the Balkans by land. “From the government, we didn’t receive anything, but from the Hungarian people, they are so cute, so nice for us,” said one Syrian woman. Hungary’s government says it will observe EU rules, which bar travel by those who don’t have valid documents. “The migrants at the Keleti railway station shouldn’t be there. After the procedure of registration begins at the border, they are being assigned to temporary shelters, to camps where they should stay until their case has been judged,” said Zoltan Kovacs, a government spokesman. “They don’t comply with that and obviously one railway ticket is not overwriting European law.” With tensions running high, crowds of migrants have been protesting outside the railway station. There has been no sign of violence, but several people were seen being escorted to a police van and driven away. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have been arriving in Europe, mainly on its southern or eastern outskirts. Many tend to head for the wealthier countries in the north and west – ignoring the EU rules which require them to wait for processing in the country where they first set foot.