Crowds of migrants have been protesting outside Keleti train station in Hungary’s capital Budapest after police sealed off the terminal to stop them travelling through the EU.
Hundreds of people chanted “Germany” and waved train tickets after being forced to leave Budapest’s Keleti station.
Officials said Hungary was trying to restore order and enforce EU rules.
Austrian police said 3,650 migrants arrived in Vienna from Hungary on August 31, with most heading for Germany.
Hungarian officials had earlier appeared to abandon efforts to register them under EU rules, which mean they should seek asylum in the first EU country they enter.
About 1,000 migrants congregated outside Keleti station, in the east of the city, as it was evacuated on September 1.
It was closed briefly and public announcements said no trains would be leaving.
The station soon reopened to non-migrant passengers, with lines of police preventing migrants from entering the main entrance.
The move came amid chaotic scenes after hundreds of migrants had tried to board services to Austria and Germany.
Some complained that they had paid hundreds of euros for tickets, and called for the station to be reopened so that they could continue their journey.
The number of migrants entering Europe has reached record levels, with 107,500 arriving in July alone.
Germany expects to take in 800,000 migrants this year – four times last year’s total.
Many of the migrants have been waiting at Keleti (East) station for days. Reporters said they are mainly Syrians, Afghans and Eritreans.
Under the EU’s Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers must register in the first EU member state in which they arrive. However, the protocol has been widely abused, as many of those who reached Hungary first arrived in Greece, where they failed to claim asylum.
The Berlin government has already said it is suspending the Dublin rule for Syrians who have travelled to Germany.
Some 1,400 people had arrived in Munich by September 1, after travelling through Austria, and more were due.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on August 31 called for greater EU co-operation on the issue and implicitly called for other countries to welcome more refugees.
“If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for,” she said.
The risks for migrants travelling through Europe were highlighted last week by the deaths of 71 people, who were found in a lorry that had travelled to Austria from Budapest.
Most of the dead were thought to be Syrians fleeing the country’s civil war.
Hundreds more people drowned in the Mediterranean last week while trying to reach Europe from Libya.
Four people have been arrested by Hungarian police over the discovery of the bodies of 71 migrants, thought to be Syrian, in an abandoned truck in Austria.
Three of those arrested are Bulgarian and one is Afghan.
The bodies of 59 men, 8 women and four children were discovered on August 27 in an abandoned truck on an Austrian highway near the Hungarian border.
They are thought to have been dead for about two days.
Officials said the victims probably died after suffocating in the vehicle.
The truck was towed to a customs building with refrigeration facilities where forensic teams worked through the night to examine the bodies.
The migrants are thought to have been dead when the vehicle crossed into Austria from Hungary. Among the victims was a girl aged between one and two years old.
The local Austrian police chief said a travel document found on the vehicle suggested that the group were Syrian migrants.
“Our preliminary assumption is of course that they were refugees, possibly a group of Syrian refugees,” Hans Peter Doskozil, Burgenland province police chief, told reporters.
The truck had the branding of a Slovakian poultry company, Hyza, on it but the firm said it no longer owned the vehicle.
Hans Peter Doskozil said it was unusual for people smugglers to use a refrigerated vehicle.
“In our preliminary investigation we found that there was no ventilation possible through the sides of the truck,” he said, adding that the victims had probably suffocated.
Hungarian police said in a statement that they had “conducted house searches… and questioned almost 20 people as witnesses”.
Hans Peter Doskozil said one of the Bulgarians arrested is assumed to be the truck’s owner, while it is “highly likely” the other two are “the ones who drove the vehicle”.
He said there was “an indication we are talking about a Bulgarian-Hungarian human trafficking operation”.
“If you look at the organization of people traffickers, these are the lowest two levels of a criminal organization,” Hans Peter Doskozil added.
No details have been given about the Afghan detainee.
The truck, which has Hungarian number plates, is understood to have left Budapest on Wednesday morning, August 26.
It is believed to have been parked in the lay-by between Neusiedl and Parndorf for at least 24 hours before police discovered the bodies.
Tens of thousands of migrants from conflict-hit states in the Middle East and Africa have been trying to make their way to Europe in recent months.
A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU’s borders last month.
Some of them pay large sums of money to people smugglers to get them through borders illegally.
More than 20 migrants have been found dead in a truck abandoned on an Austrian highway lay-by near the eastern border with Hungary, local authorities say.
The number of dead could be as high as 50, police say. Their bodies had started to decompose.
The truck has been moved to an undisclosed location for detailed examination.
The shocking find comes as a summit focusing on migration takes place in the Austrian capital, Vienna.
Tens of thousands of migrants from conflict-hit states in the Middle East and Africa have been trying to make their way to Europe.
Austria’s Chancellor Werner Faymann said the tragedy showed once again “how necessary it is to save lives by combating criminals and people traffickers”.
The vehicle – a refrigerated truck with Hungarian license plates – was parked off the A4 highway between Parndorf and Neusiedl am See, according to Burgenland police chief Hans Peter Doskozil.
Officers had found at least 20 bodies inside the truck, but there could be 30, 40 or even 50 inside, he told Austrian TV.
The truck was found late on Thursday morning, August 27, but had been there since at least August 26, Peter Doskozil said.
The victims had been dead for some time.
At 15:30 local time the truck was towed away, and was due to be taken to a hall in the local area for further examination, Austrian media report.
Only there would the truck be opened and the recovery of the bodies begin, the authorities said.
The truck bears the logo of a Slovakian poultry company, Hyza, which said in a statement that the vehicle no longer belonged to the firm – but the new owners had not removed the branding.
Hungarian police are working with Austrian police on the investigation, a spokesman for the Hungarian prime minister said.
Hungary had been informed that the driver was Romanian, the spokesman said.
In Vienna, Serbia and Macedonia have told the summit on migration that EU must come up with an action plan to respond to the influx of migrants into Europe.
Austria has complained that the EU has failed to address the problem of people entering via the Western Balkans.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today’s find “reminds us to tackle the issue of migration with European spirit and find solutions”.
A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU’s borders last month and on August 26 police counted more than 3,000 crossing into Serbia.
Meanwhile migrants are continuing to die as they try to reach Europe via the central Mediterranean route. The bodies of at least 51 people were found on August 26 in the hold of a stricken ship off the coast of Libya.
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