Refugees storm Budapest train as horror of crisis hits home

Hundreds of refugees stormed Budapest's main international rail station after police reopened it Thursday, in an escalating crisis seared into European hearts by horrifying pictures of a drowned Syrian toddler.

Chaos erupted as crowds of people burst into the flashpoint station and rushed towards a standing train, with Hungarian police seemingly absent following a two-day stand-off with refugees trying to head to Germany and Austria.

The scenes of confusion in a deeply divided the EUcame as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban held urgent talks in Brussels on dealing with the world's worst refugee crisis since the second world war.

"There is a divide ... between the east and the west of the EU," EU President Donald Tusk said ahead of the meeting with Orban.

"Some member states are thinking about containing the wave of migration, symbolised by the Hungarian [border] fence. Others want solidarity in advocating a so-called obligatory basis for [refugee] quotas" to redistribute refugees.

The EU is riven by frictions between transit nations where the refugees arrive by sea or land - mainly Greece, Italy and Hungary - and those where they hope to seek asylum, mainly in northern and western Europe.

France, Italy and Germany urged a rethink of European asylum rules to ensure "a fair distribution" of refugees throughout the 28-member bloc, as tensions soared between European states over how to tackle the huge influx.