Austria to revoke measures that let refugees cross from Hungary

Austria said on Sunday it planned to end emergency measures that have allowed thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary into Austria and Germany since Saturday morning.

Austria had suspended its random border checks after photographs of a Syrian toddler lying dead on a Turkish beach showed Europeans the horror faced by those desperate enough to travel illegally into the heart of Europe, which is deeply divided over how to cope.

After 71 people suffocated in the back of a truck abandoned on an Austrian highway en route from Hungary, and as thousands headed from Budapest toward Austria on foot, Vienna had agreed with Germany to waive rules requiring refugees to register an asylum claim in the first EU country they reach.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said that decision was being revised following "intensive talks" with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a telephone call with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, bitterly opposed to the waiver.

"We have always said this is an emergency situation in which we must act quickly and humanely. We have helped more than 12,000 people in an acute situation," Faymann said.

"Now we have to move step-by-step away from emergency measures toward normality, in conformity with the law and dignity."

Hungary laid on over 100 buses to the border on Saturday night after Austria said it had agreed to the emergency measures, to the relief of thousands of refugees stranded in Budapest after traveling through the Balkans and Greece, many of them fleeing civil war in Syria. Refugees arriving in the Austrian town of Nickelsdorf, on the border with Hungary, told Al Jazeera they were happy to have left the scenes of desperation they experienced in Hungary.

Many others had set off from a station to make the 110-mile journey on foot. And platforms filled up again on Sunday.

Germany has said it expects to receive 800,000 refugees this year, and urged other EU members to open their doors.

At the station in Munich, state capital of Bavaria, a few dozen well-wishers turned up to cheer the new arrivals. Those who stopped to speak told of weeks of arduous travel by land and sea. Some seemed intimidated by the welcoming applause.

The president of the Upper Bavarian government, Christoph Hillenbrand, said he expected 13,000 refugees to reach the city on Sunday, up from a previous estimate of 11,000, following 6,800 arrivals on Saturday. Hillenbrand, adding that 11,000 could arrive on Monday, said Munich was running out of capacity.

Authorities there were using a disused car showroom and a railway logistics center as makeshift camps, and were adding a further 1,000 beds to 2,300 already set up at the city’s international trade fair ground. About 4,000 people were sent to other German states.

“It’s getting tight,” Hillenbrand told reporters at the train station.

Simone Hilgers, a spokeswoman for the Upper Bavarian government, told The Associated Press that "if the arrivals keep up as they have for the past days you can imagine we're eventually going to reach our limit." She declined to say how many more people Munich could manage

Merkel's decision to allow the influx has caused a rift in her conservative bloc, with her Bavarian allies saying she had pushed ahead without consulting the federal state administrations dealing with the problem on the ground.

The political rift is greater across Europe, with Hungary's Orban accusing Berlin of encouraging the influx.

“As long as Austria and Germany don't say clearly that they won’t take in any more migrants, several million new immigrants will come to Europe," he told Austrian broadcaster ORF.

Orban has portrayed the crisis as a defense of Europe's prosperity, identity and "Christian values" against a tide of mainly Muslim refugees.

"We don't want to, and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country," Orban told the press after a meeting of EU government officials in Brussels on Friday.

Hungary, the main entry point for refugees into Europe's borderless Schengen zone, plans to seal its southern frontier with a new, high fence by Sept. 15.

Some EU states say the focus should be on tackling the violence in the Middle East that has caused so many to flee.

British Prime Minister David Cameron wants to hold a vote in parliament in early October to allow it to join air strikes on Syria by a U.S.-led coalition on Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), London's Sunday Times said, and Le Monde reported that France was also considering joining.

Britain's treasury chief, George Osborne, has said the country's international aid budget will be put to use to help the government settle thousands more Syrian refugees. The number has not yet been set.

The Vatican will shelter two families of refugees who are "fleeing death" from war or hunger, Pope Francis announced Sunday as he called on Catholic parishes, convents and monasteries across Europe to do the same.

"Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing death by war and by hunger, and who are on a path toward a hope for life, the Gospel calls us to be neighbors to the smallest and most abandoned, to give them concrete hope," Francis said.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected a call by opposition leader Isaac Herzog to give refuge to Syrian refugees, saying the country was too small to take them in.

Israel is "not indifferent to the human tragedy" of refugees from Syria, Netanyahu said in remarks at a Cabinet meeting, noting that Israeli hospitals had been treating wounded from that country's civil war.

Al Jazeera and wire services