LIVE BLOG: Refugee crisis in Europe

Canada on Thursday denied it had received an asylum request from the family of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian refugee child who has become a symbol of Europe's migrant crisis after his little body washed up on a Turkish beach.

Relatives said the Canadian immigration department rejected their application in June, forcing them to leave Turkey on a smugglers’ boat that sank, drowning three-year-old Aylan with his mother, brother and at least nine other refugees.

But the Kurdi family’s story was denied by the immigration ministry - and by the boy's aunt, the source of the media report, who has since clarified her comments.

"There was no record of an application received for Mr. Abdullah Kurdi (the toddler's father) and his family," said a ministry statement. It said an application had been received for Abdullah's brother Mohammed, but "was returned as it was incomplete".

"Canada did not offer citizenship to Mr. Abdullah Kurdi," which was also reported, the ministry said.

As the world watches drowned refugees wash up on Europe's beaches, the United States is also under pressure to do more to help the desperate victims of Syria's civil war.

Since fighting erupted in 2011 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has recommended 17,000 Syrians for resettlement in the United States. By the end of this month, it will have accepted around 1,800.

Washington has promised to do more if it can, but Syrian refugees - even those screened and approved by the UNHCR in crowded camps - are subject to stringent, and lengthy, US security checks.

Larry Yungk, senior resettlement officer with UNHCR, said the United States was working hard to interview and process Syrian refugees but the resettlement process is not fast.

"In recent years additional security measures mean resettlement that once took 9 to 12 months, now typically takes 18 months or longer," he told AFP.

Video emerged on Thursday of police officers pepper spraying a group of Syrian refugees attempting to cross into Hungary from Serbia in the night on 30 August.

After a group of migrants - men, women and young children - pleaded with the guards to let them pass, they began to walk towards the barbed wire fence at the border, a New York Times video shows.

A woman and her 18-month-old child then led the way as the group headed towards the fence. When they came within inches of the border police, they were sprayed in the eyes.

Chaos ensued, and the refugees coughed and screamed in pain as they ran back to the Serbian side of the border.

“My little love can’t open his eyes,” the mother of the 18-month-old told the Times reporters at the scene. “He gestured for me to come before he sprayed me and my baby, the low-life."

Later, the police got into a car and drove away. Then the refugees headed back towards the border fence.

Hungarian police have not responded to the Times' request for comment.

Prime Minister David Cameron gave in to pressure at home and abroad on Thursday and promised to fulfil Britain's "moral responsibilities" to accept a bigger share of Syrian refugees.

Cameron said he had been "deeply moved" by images of three-year-old Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi, who was found dead on a Turkish beach, but he stopped short of making any new commitments.

"We do care," Cameron told reporters.

He said Britain would keep the number of refugees it accepts "under review" although he added: "There isn't a solution that's simply about taking people, it's got to be a comprehensive solution".

According to the Guardian newspaper, Cameron is prepared to accept thousands Syrians living in refugee camps on the border with their country, not the ones that have made it to Europe.

"Cameron remains convinced that accepting large number of Syrian refugees who are already in Europe will make the crisis worse and encourage more chaos," the Guardian stated.

The numbers of Syrian refugees, funding, and their planned location are still being debated on by the government, the newspaper added.

Cameron's announcement comes as a direct contrast to chancellor George Osbourne's comments earlier in the day, who blamed the Islamic State for killing Aylan Kurdi.

“We know there is not a simple answer to this crisis," he said. "What you need to do is first of all tackle ISIS [Islamic State] and the criminal gangs who killed that boy.”

Britain has accepted 216 Syrian refugees under a special government scheme over the past year and around 5,000 Syrians have been granted asylum since the conflict there broke out in 201-far fewer than countries like France, Germany and Sweden.

A petition to parliament urging Britain to accept more refugees has garnered nearly 250,000 signatures, while campaign group Avaaz said that  2,000 Britons had volunteered to host refugee families.

UK Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn has called for people to change how they are talking about Europe's refugee crisis.

Speaking at a hustings hosted by Sky on Thursday evening, the Islington North MP emphasised the scale of the problem.

"Look at the legacy of the Iraq war, of the refugee flows all across the region, more displaced people than at any time in human recorded history," he said.

"There’s a human crisis in North Africa, there’s a human crisis of people dying in the Mediterranean, there’s a human crisis of people now in Hungary trying to get on a train in order to get to a place of safety.

Can we have less of this language about swarms and insects and a bit more language about humanitarianism?"

The UK has been castigated for having taken in fewer than 200 Syrian refugees, in a conflict that has displaced more than 6.5 million people out of a population of 22 million. 

Inspired by support and offers of practical help from fans across Germany in recent weeks, Aston Villa and Swindon Town fans became the first in England to say they planned to hold aloft such banners amid attempts to coordinate support via social media.

German football giants Bayern Munich announced that they will open a 'training camp' in the upcoming weeks, which will provide homeless refugees with German classes, meals, and football equipment.

The Bavarian five-time European champions will also donate €1million (£735,000) towards refugee integration projects from money earned from a friendly match earlier this summer.

Set up through the youth department at the club, the training camp is aimed at the children and adolescents of refugees to give them a "determined rhythm of work".

"We at FC Bayern consider it our socio-political responsibility to help displaced and needy children, women and men, supporting and assisting them in Germany," said chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in a statement on the club's website.

The United Nations' refugee agency Thursday estimated that around 3,500 refugees crossed into Macedonia from Greece in the past 24 hours.

According to the data from UNHCR, the refugees were transported in five trains from the Macedonian border town of Gevgelija to the northern town of Tabanovce on the Serbian border.

Refugees are crossing into Macedonia in groups under tight police control and then sent to reception centers where they are processed.

Melita Sunjic, spokeswoman for the UNHCR in the Western Balkans, on Tuesday issued a warning that nearly 7,000 refugees were expected to cross the Greek-Macedonian border this weekend.

"We heard from our colleagues in Greece that this weekend about 150 busses will get here. This means more than seven thousand people. So, we need to be prepared. Since the beginning of the crisis the number of refugees increases to double. Now we have about 3,000-3,200 refugees a day," said Sunjic.

The teams of the Red Cross, the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations in Macedonia provide the necessary assistance for the refugees waiting to be transferred by trains.

Sources in Kobane say that widely-circulated reports about the young boy identified as Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body was found on the shores of Bodrum, Turkey, being from the north Syrian Kurdish region are incorrect. 

“Not a single family in Kobane claims to be connected or know the young boy," said head of the Journalists Office in Kobane Mustafa Bali. “Kobane maintains very strong social connections and community links; families across the villages all know each other well."

"As far as we locals know, the boy is not from here,” he added. “The reporters who’ve written about the boy are not from here [Kobane] and it is more likely their reports about the boy being from Kobane are incorrect." 

Many Syrians as well as other refugees from across the region make the journey across the Aegean Sea from the Turkish borders to Greece. Bali believes Aylan might have been from anywhere across Syria or elsewhere.

Several Arabic media reports have suggested that the boy is a Palestinian. 

Bali believes that journalists have used the name Kobane in their reports of the incident to attract media attention.

“Using Kobane as a name and saying the boy is a Kurd attracts a lot of media attention because our fight with IS,” said Bali. 

Europe is facing an "unprecedented humanitarian and political crisis" as it struggles with the huge influx of refugees, the European Commission's vice-president Frans Timmermans said on Thursday.

"We must find European responses to a problem that cannot be resolved by countries individually," Timmermans said ahead of talks with Greek Prime Minister Vassiliki Thanou on a crisis that has seen more than 230,000 people land on Greek shores this year.

AFP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused the EU of turning the Mediterranean into a "migrant cemetery".

"European countries, which turned the Mediterranean Sea - the cradle of ancient civilisations - into a migrant cemetery are party to the crime that takes place when each refugee loses their life," he said in a speech in Ankara on Thursday.

Conservative Canadian Immigration Minister Chris Alexander suspended his re-election campaign on Thursday reportedly after discovering that the family of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi had been refused an asylum application in Canada in June.

“The tragic photo of young Aylan Kurdi and the news of the death of his brother and mother broke hearts around the world,” Alexander said in a statement Thursday morning. “Like all Canadians, I was deeply saddened by that image and of many other images of the plight of the Syrian and Iraqi migrants fleeing persecution at the hands of ISIS.

"I am meeting with officials to ascertain both the facts of the case of the Kurdi family and to receive an update on the migrant crisis.”

Elections are set to be held in Canada in October.

AFP:

Germany and France have agreed that the European Union, facing a slew of migrant crises, should impose binding quotas on the numbers member states take in, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday.

"I spoke this morning with the French president, and the French-German position, which will transmit to the European institutions, is that we agree that ... we need binding quotas within the European Union to share the burden. That is the principle of solidarity," Merkel told reporters during a visit in the Swiss capital.

French Prime Minsiter Manuel Valls has tweeted a photo of Aylan Kurdi and called for urgent action across the EU.