Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted migrants yesterday, bussed to the Hungarian border by a right-wing government that had tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reaching Europe’s frontiers.

Left to walk the last yards into Austria, rain-soaked migrants, many of them refugees from Syria’s civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna, where many said they were resolved to continue on to Germany.

German police later said the first 450 of up to 10,000 migrants expected yesterday had arrived on a special train in Munich from Austria. Austrian police said over 6,000 had entered the country with more expected, highlighting the continent’s worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

“It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary,” said Omar, arriving in Vienna with his family and hundreds of other migrants who poured out onto a fenced-off platform and were handed food, drinks and other supplies.

In Budapest, almost emptied of migrants by nightfall on Friday, the main railway station was again filling up with newly arrived migrants but trains to western Europe remained cancelled. So hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border like others had tried on Friday.

After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary’s government deployed over 100 buses overnight to take thousands of migrants to the Austrian border. Austria said it had agreed with Germany that it would allow the migrants access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach.

Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags against the rain, long lines of weary migrants, many carrying small, sleeping children, climbed off buses on the Hungarian side of the border and walked into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers. Waiting Austrians held signs that read, “Refugees welcome”.

“We’re happy. We’ll go to Germany,” said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed. Another, who declined to be named, said: “Hungary should be fired from the EU. Such bad treatment.”

We’re happy. We’ll go to Germany. Hungary should be fired from the EU. Such bad treatment

Hungary insisted the bus rides were a one-off, even as hundreds more migrants assembled in Budapest, part of a seemingly relentless surge northwards through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece.

By contrast, the Austrian state railway company OeBB said it had added 4,600 seats for migrants by extending trains and laying on special, non-scheduled services.

Hungary, the main entry point into Europe’s borderless Schengen zone for migrants, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern frontier with a new, high fence by September 15.

Several hundred migrants left Budapest's Keleti railway station on foot yesterday and plan to walk to Vienna, a day after about 1,000 migrants set off on a similar journey. Hungary sent about 4,500 migrants to the Austrian border by bus overnight, including those who were walking on the motorway, but said this was a one-off and there would be no further transports. Photo: Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

Hungarian officials have painted the crisis as a defence of Europe’s prosperity, identity and “Christian values” against an influx of mainly Muslim migrants.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said yesterday Hungary would deploy police forces along its border with Serbia after September 15 and the army too if Parliament approves a government proposal. “It’s not 150,000 (migrants coming) that some (in the EU) want to divide according to quotas, it’s not 500,000, a figure that I heard in Brussels, it’s millions, then tens of millions, because the supply of immigrants is endless,” he said.

For days, several thousand camped outside Budapest’s main railway station, where trains to western Europe were cancelled as the government insisted all those entering Hungary be registered and their asylum applications processed in the country as per EU rules.

But on Friday, in separate rapid-fire developments, hundreds broke out of a teeming camp on Hungary’s frontier with Serbia, escaped a stranded train, and took to the highway by foot chanting “Germany, Germany!”

The government appeared to throw in the towel, ordering over 100 buses to take them to the border. Arriving at a Vienna railway station yesterday, migrants were met by announcements for Germany-bound trains in Arabic as well as German.

The scenes were emblematic of a crisis – about 350,000 refugees and migrants have reached the border of the European Union this year – that has left the 28-nation EU groping for solutions amid dysfunctional squabbling over burden-sharing.