Hungarian police reopen Budapest train station to migrants

The migrants pushed their way into the train station in the east of the Hungarian capital on Thursday morning after police received the order to withdraw from their positions.

However, just minutes later it became clear that the migrants' hopes had been dashed - at least for the time being, after Hungary's national rail carrier announced that there would be no trains departing for western Europe in the immediate future.

"In the interests of rail travel security the company has decide that until further notice, direct train services from Budapest to western Europe will not be in service," it said in a statement.

Even before the news was announced, many of the migrants stormed trains that were waiting at the station, but apparently not bound for international destinations.

This came after more than 48 hours of a tense standoff between police and the migrants, who at times shouted slogans like "Germany, Germany!"

The development also came as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was set to travel to Brussels for talks with the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, European Council President Donald Tusk, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on how to cope with the unprecedented wave of refugees towards western Europe.

Germany, which appears to be the favored destination of many of the migrants, expects to receive around 800,000 asylum seekers by the end of 2015, according to estimates from the country's interior ministry.

Speaking to public broadcaster ZDF on Wednesday, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said that Germany could cope with the situation this year, but that it could not do so indefinitely.

"For three, four, five, six years, 800,000 are too many even for a country like Germany," de Maiziere said.

The interior minister and Chancellor Angela Merkel have repeatedly called for a European Union-wide strategy to cope with the refugee crisis.

pfd/kms (Reuters, AP)