LIVE BLOG: Refugee crisis in Europe
Aylan Kurdi, his brother, Galip, and his mother, Rihan, are buried in Kobane
UK Prime Minister David Cameron announces that Britain will take 'thousands more' Syrian refugees
Standoff between migrants and refugees and Hungarian police has continue as rail passengers refuse to leave train for refugee camp and reportedly start walking to Austria
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres calls on EU to admit 200,000 refugees in a 'mass relocation programme' and plans to visits Greek island of Kos
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande to present joint EU refugee redistribution proposal
Canada denies turning away three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi's family
Live Updates
A Palestinian teen threatened with deportation who burst into tears during a televised debate with German Chancellor Angela Merkel has got a residency permit for "humanitarian reasons," a statement said Friday.
In the encounter in July, 14-year-old Reem told Merkel in fluent German that she and her family, who arrived in the north German city of Rostock from a Lebanese refugee camp four years ago, faced possible deportation.
Merkel at the time expressed sympathy before defending her government's asylum policies, saying Germany "couldn't manage" to shoulder the burden of all those fleeing war and poverty.
Minutes later, Reem began to weep and the chancellor stroked her head and tried to comfort her in a way critics said appeared awkward and cold, and which led to a storm of protest on social media.
The Rostock City Hall said in a statement that Reem and her family "had today received for the first time residency permits for humanitarian reasons".
"These permits are valid until March 2016," it said.
Germany now says it is likely to take 800,000 refugees this year.
BUDAPEST - The first buses carrying migrants from Hungary to Austria departed early on Saturday, after Vienna and Berlin agreed to accept thousands of people who have been stranded in Budapest.
One bus left the Keleti train station where thousands of migrants have been waiting to reach Western Europe, an AFP reporter on the scene said, while others picked up members of a crowd of some 1,200 people who set off on foot for the border earlier in the day.
VIENNA - Austria and Germany have agreed to receive thousands of migrants due to arrive at the Hungarian border in the coming hours, Austria's Chancellor Werner Faymann said early Saturday.
Faymann told Austria's APA agency that he had informed Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban of the decision "in consultation" with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said it was motivated by "the current emergency at the Hungarian border".
Late Friday Hungary said it was laying on buses to ferry desperate refugees who had set off on foot for the Austrian border after being stranded for days in Budapest's main railway station.
MEE's Mary Atkinson is travelling around north-west Germany talking to refugees and migrants about their journey to the country. In the town of Oer Erkenschwick, Atkinson met with an elderly Iraqi Christian couple from Kirkuk, who were staying at a refugee centre run by the Red Cross there.
The couple, along with their two daughters and six grandchildren, decided to leave Iraq and travel all together to Germany after their daughter read on the internet that Germany was allowing refugees to stay.
"We travelled from Kirkuk to Turkey, and then we came together by boat," Bayer recounted. "After that it was so, so hard. We travelled through Europe by bus at night." He broke down in tears, before adding, "Thank God we arrived safely."
The family plan on staying in Germany for the time being, describing the people there as "so good." Bayer, who used to work with many British people at the oil factory in Kirkuk, said he would have loved to go to England.
"But we know they will never give us residence," he said. "We have no idea how long we will stay in the centre, but what can we do? At least there is a Catholic church round the corner where we can go to pray."
"So many people have left Kirkuk, especially the Christians. We are very scared about our four sons who stayed behind in Iraq. But we were most worried about our daughters, because of what Islamic State does to women," Bayer said.
A YouGov poll has revealed the British public still mostly oppose the country taking in more refugees.
The UK pledged on Friday to take in 10,000 more refugees, after global outrage at the death of a Syrian toddler who was found drowned and face down on a Turkish beach earlier this week.
Thousands of refugees broke through a police barricade on their 240 kilometre journey from Budapest, Hungary to Austria marching on foot.
The refugees, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan, left Budapest's Keleti railway station this morning after authorities refused to let them travel to Austria on trains.
An estimated 2000 refugees were stuck in makeshift camps at the station for a few days, as Hungary tightened its anti-migrant policy.
As they walked on the motorway, many of the people held up pictures of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and chanted "Germany, Germany."
"We are very happy that something is happening at last, The next stop is Austria. The children are very tired, Hungary is very bad, we have to go somehow," one man from Syria told AFP.
Turkey’s prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has said he was proud of being the premier of a country currently hosting two million refugees, as the world’s richest countries failed to accommodate Syrians fleeing violence from their homeland.
“As Turkey, we have been trying to grab the world’s attention by making ourselves heard for the last four years that there is a humanitarian crisis in Syria. Millions of refugees, millions of children, women and elderly are victims of an oppressive regime as well as of terror organizations. I stand here proud as the prime minister of a country that hosts 2 million of refugees: 1.7 million Syrians and around 200,000 Iraqis,” Davutoğlu said at the B20 Turkey Conference in Ankara.
Davutoğlu added that despite its relatively small economy, Turkey spent more than $6 billion in the last four years for refugees.
“I want to make this call to world leaders, intellectuals, and the business world from this country hosting more refugees than any other country in the world: Please think about refugees," Davutoğlu addressed the business people representing the G-20 countries at the conference. "Not only Syrians but those coming from Africa and other places. We should adopt an integrated strategy and should defend people’s rights by struggling against oppression. We should move hand in hand for humanity. This is a turning point for humanity and a test we’ll pass through.”
“For the last four years, I have been trying, under my capacity as the foreign minister and now as the prime minister, with our president… to persuade world leaders for the need of the establishment of a secure zone inside Syria. We proposed a solution in which refugees would be sheltered in their homes.”
Referring to the recent photo that went viral of three year old Aylan Kurdi washed up on the coast of Turkey, Davutoğlu said, “This lifeless body is a warning signal for all of us. If Syrian children are not safe in their homes than our children in Ankara, Paris, London or New York will not be either.”
Middle East Eye has been speaking to Syrian refugees in Oer Erkenschwick, a small town north of Dortmund in Germany that hit the news last week when a video emerged of locals welcoming refugees arriving on a coach.
Farid, a 26-year-old from Damascus, told MEE's Mary Atkinson that he would like to settle in the United Kingdom but feels it is unlikely due to the country's restrictive policy on Syrian refugees.
"I am a Syrian Kurd. My family is from northern Syria but I grew up in Damascus and lived my whole life there," he said.
"I spent 30 days on the journey from Turkey to here. It was so hard. I would love to come to Britain but David Cameron is so strict with refugees. He treats us so harshly."
The UK has been criticised for taking in fewer than 200 Syrian refugees, from a country where a four-year-long war has displaced over 6.5 million out of a 22.5 million population.
On Friday Prime Minister Cameron announced that the UK will take in "thousands" more Syrian refugees, after global outrage was sparked over a photo of a dead child found drowned on a Turkish beach. Cameron said the refugees will be received from camps close to Syria, so as to provide them with "safe passage" to the UK, rather than taking in those who have already made the treacherous journey to Europe.
The 71 migrants found dead in an abandoned lorry in Austria last week had most likely suffocated soon after they were picked up by a smuggler in Hungary, police said Friday.
Preliminary autospy results indicate that "if you take into account the number of people and lack of oxygen, it's fair to assume that asphyxiation occurred within no time at all," police spokesman Hans Peter Doskozil said.
The final coroner's report was expected to take another five or six weeks, he added.
The victims were believed to have been from the war-torn countries of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, Doskozil said.
The 59 men, eight women and four children were discovered piled on top of each other in the back of a refrigerated poultry truck in a motorway layby near the Hungarian border on 27 August.
MEE's Mary Atkinson is in traveling around northwestern Germany today talking to locals about the influx of refugees and migrants arriving in their country.
In Oer Erkenschwick, a town which came into the spotlight recently when locals were seen warmly welcoming Syrians in a video that went viral, 34-year-old Stefan told her what happened when far-right supporters planned a demonstration there last week.
"They cancelled at the last minute, but the counter-demonstartion went ahead. There were 1,000 people there. The population of this town is only 30,000, but people came from the surrounding towns, too. The whole square was completely full. We have to show them that their thinking has no support here."
Irish rocker Bob Geldof on Friday offered to house four Syrian families at his two homes in Britain, calling the migrants crisis a "sickening disgrace".
"I can't stand what is happening. I cannot stand what it does to us," Geldof told Ireland's RTE radio.
"Me and Jeanne would be prepared to take three families immediately in our place in Kent and a family in our flat in London immediately," he said.
Geldof said he and his partner Jeanne Marine could house the refugees "until such time as they can get going and get a purchase on their future."
The musician-turned-activist, who campaigns on a variety of social issues, said that the images of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi were a source of shame.
"I look at it with profound shame and a monstrous betrayal of who we are and what we wish to be".
More than 1,000 migrants stranded for days at Budapest's main train station left the building on Friday, intent on walking to the Austrian border, according to an AFP journalist on the scene.
The huge crowd included people in wheelchairs and on crutches, as well as parents carrying children on their shoulders, all prepared to march 175 kilometres (110 miles) to the border.
Some flashed victory signs while others waved images of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recently announced that Berlin was easing asylum restrictions for Syrians.
"We are very happy that something is happening at last. The next stop is Austria. The children are very tired, Hungary is very bad, we have to go somehow," 23-year-old Osama from Syria told AFP.
The migrants were part of an estimated 2,000 people stuck in makeshift refugee camps at Keleti station, after railway authorities had blocked them from boarding trains to Austria and Germany because they lacked EU visas.
Police watched the silent migrants walk through the Hungarian capital but did not intervene, the AFP correspondent said.
The march was causing traffic jams on the main route into the city from the western Buda area.
It came as Hungarian lawmakers debated tough new anti-immigration measures, including criminalising illegal border crossing and vandalism to the new anti-immigrant razor-wire fence erected along the border with Serbia.
Abdullah Kurdi buried his sons, Aylan and Galip, and his wife, Rihan, in Kobane at midday today after they drowned in the Mediterranean on Wednesday, trying to reach Greece.
The charity Migrant Offshore Aid Station, which helps rescue migrants in the Mediterranean, said Friday it had received a record 600,000 euros in donations since the publication of a photograph of the drowned Syrian toddler.
"There is an enormous response from the public, the tide of indifference is shifting," said Christian Peregrin, spokesperson for the charity which was set up in Malta in 2013 by an American-Italian couple.
Over 10,000 donors have come forward over the past 48 hours, largely from the United States and Britain, but also from countries including Brazil, Germany and Turkey, Peregrin told AFP.
"It's not a one-off... many are setting up monthly donations," he said, describing the rush of activity which saw the charity receive 600,000 euros ($66,825).
Founded by Catholic couple Christopher and Regina Catrambone after Pope Francis's appeal against "the globalisation of indifference", MOAS in 2014 charted the "Phoenix", a 40-metre long boat which rescued 3,000 migrants in two months.
After a winter pause, the operation began again in May this year in partnership with Doctors Without Borders, and the "Phoenix" has since saved over 8,000 people.
On Friday, it brought another 332 people, including 113 children, to safety in the southern Italian port of Reggio Calabria.
MOAS needs 400,000 euros a month to operate and until now "10,000 euros donated in a day would have been a good day", Peregrin said.
The charity mainly runs on help from large donors, but the publication this week of harrowing images of three-year-old Syrian toddler Aylan Shenu, found dead on a Turkish beach, sparked a flurry of fresh contributions.