Chaos on Europe's rail lines as refugees set sights on Germany, UK

Around 100-150 migrants and refugees staged a demonstration outside Budapest's main international train station early on Wednesday as police blocked some 2,000 from boarding trains to Austria and Germany.

Around 600 men, women and children, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, were sitting or standing outside the Keleti station while some 1,200 were downstairs in a so-called "transit zone".

Meanwhile federal police in Germany reported that more than 100 migrants and refugees an hour have arrived in the country on Wednesday, mostly arriving in Munich on trains from Hungary that presumably left before the police blockade.

The national total for Tuesday was 3,709, more than twice the daily average in recent weeks.

Around 100 migrants and refugees, hoping to get to Germany, were sitting on a platform at a suburban train station near the border with Serbia also on Wednesday, refusing to board a train to the Debrecen refugee camp.

Police said in a statement that the group "demanded to be allowed to travel on to Germany... Police have taken the necessary security steps to ensure that train traffic is undisturbed."

In northern France, hundreds of Eurostar passengers were stranded on Wednesday after migrants and refugees apparently climbed on top of one of the train's roofs in an attempt to enter the UK.

The disruption to the Eurostar service forced several others on their way to London or Paris to turn back, with two other trains cancelled on Wednesday to deal with the passenger backlog.

Panic as Hungary applies rules

Hungary, which saw 50,000 migrants enter the country in August alone, this week allowed thousands to board trains to Austria and Germany, but on Tuesday police suddenly blocked access to the station for anyone without an EU visa.

The Hungarian government of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, which has built a razor-wire barrier along its 175-kilometre border with Serbia, said that it was applying EU rules.

But the razor-wire is proving ineffective in keeping out the tens of thousands of people trekking up from Greece through the western Balkans, with Hungarian authorities saying that 2,284 crossed on Tuesday including 353 children.

"If Europe is letting us in, why don't they give us visas? Why do we have to make this clandestine journey?" Bilal, a Syrian from Aleppo, told AFP on Tuesday near Serbia's border with Hungary.

"We fear that one day everything will change, that even Germany will close the border when it has had enough, so we must make our journey extremely fast," he said.