Migrants allowed to leave Budapest on trains for Austria, Germany

Several hundred migrants stuck for days in makeshift refugee camps at train stations in Budapest were on Monday allowed to board trains headed for Austria and Germany, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

Hungarian police had previously prevented as many as 2,000 migrants from leaving the station because they had no legal papers.

But on Monday there were no security forces present as the refugees, many from Syria, rushed to get on trains leaving for Vienna, Munich and Berlin.

People were running along the platform to catch an Austria-bound train scheduled to leave at 11:10 GMT, with some helping to lift a woman in a wheelchair into a carriage.

There were confusing scenes as a Hungarian railway employee initially refused to allow the train to leave, saying it was packed beyond capacity and some people did not have valid tickets.

But the train eventually departed with a 20-minute delay.

However, an Austrian police officer at the station told AFP the migrants would be stopped once they crossed into Austria.