Austria shuts motorway near Hungary as migrants walk to Vienna

Reuters, Vienna :Austria partially shut a motorway linking Vienna and Hungary on Friday as dozens of migrants who had crossed the border set off for the Austrian capital on foot rather than wait for struggling authorities to arrange transport. Austria closed the A4 motorway near the Hungarian border for security reasons on Friday morning. A spokeswoman for the road operator ASFINAG later said the eastbound lane toward Hungary had reopened.Around 8,000 people crossed the border into Austria on Thursday and a further 3,600 had crossed since midnight, a police spokesman said, adding that he expected the number of crossings to match Thursday’s throughout the day.Austria cut its rail link to Hungary on Thursday, citing a “massive overburdening” of its capacity by migrants who continue to stream in from Hungary, many of them having fled the civil war in Syria and marched through the Western Balkans. The train line will remain closed over the weekend, the rail company said.Since Germany and Austria said on Saturday that they would let the wave of migrants enter their territory, tens of thousands of people have passed through Austria on their way to Germany. Only hundreds have requested asylum in Austria.A Reuters witness saw hundreds of people crossing the Hungarian border into Austria on Friday morning.”Around 1,500 people have spent the night outdoors,” the police spokesman said. Authorities were operating 30 buses and were trying to move people “to where they can continue their journey”, he added.The police handling the new arrivals at the Hungarian border are struggling to provide food and shelter for the migrants while arranging transport – largely on buses, since the rail link to Vienna is suspended.Hungary has transported tens of thousands of people to near the Austrian border in the past week. They have then crossed the border on foot. Others have entered Austria by train, but that option has been unavailable since Thursday’s rail suspension.The Austrian government was due to hold a special meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss the migrant crisis.The Wiener Zeitung, a daily newspaper, said the crisis would cost Austria an extra 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion), citing an estimate by the Foreign Ministry, which deals with integration matters. Kurier, another daily, said the figure was for 2016.A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said it had not compiled any such estimate.Washington reports adds: President Barack Obama has directed his administration to prepare to take in at least 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, the White House said on Thursday.It is the first specific commitment the United States has made toward increasing its acceptance of refugees from the war-torn country.Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the United States has taken in 1,500 refugees, with 300 more expected to be cleared by October.But refugee advocates and some members of Congress said taking in an additional 10,000 refugees did not go far enough toward addressing the humanitarian crisis triggered by the war, which has prompted a massive refugee influx into Europe.