Highway chaos in Hungary as Austria toughens border controls in bid to stem flow of migrants
Hungary asks Germany to ‘clarify’ legal rules on travel by migrants
Austria toughened controls at its eastern borders in an attempt to clamp down on trafficking of refugees, triggering a queue of vehicles on Monday that stretched some 20 kilometres back into Hungary.
Austrian authorities last week discovered the bodies of 71 refugees in an abandoned lorry that had travelled through Hungary.
“We will do controls for an undetermined length of time at all important border crossings in the eastern region, looking at all vehicles that have possible hiding places for trafficked people,” Johanna Mikl-Leitner told ORF radio.
Hungary’s M1 motorway leading to Austria, which also borders Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic on its eastern side, clogged up due to the checks, which the firm that maintains the road said had started at the weekend.
Over the past three days, Hungarian police said they had caught 8,792 migrants crossing into the country, most of them from Serbia.