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Why Hungary Changed Its Mind Over Migrants

The packed impromptu camp set up at Budapest's Keleti railway station amid the refugee crisis has markedly thinned out and was half empty on Saturday morning.

It came after the Hungarian government unexpectedly decided to lay on buses for the people who had set up a temporary home there.

Earlier in the week, they had been stopped from boarding trains to Germany and so several hundred people who were fed up with their treatment left on Friday and started making the journey on foot.

A phalanx of desperate migrants and refugees was pictured snaking along one of the country's busiest roads.

Along the route, buses then picked them up and the government's change of mind was no doubt - in part - forced by the negative headlines and the bad PR.

But Hungary, as the first EU country on the route through the Balkan Peninsula, is still getting a steady stream of new arrivals.

We spoke to one family who had come from Aleppo.

Reyhan and her children looked bewildered as they asked us about the buses - which were no longer running - and what they could do.

The railway officials are allowing people to board trains to the border but there is no co-ordinated help and there is unlikely to be any from Hungary's government.

Germany now seems to be offering an 'open door policy' for refugees and, ironically, it is this that is attracting more people to make the dangerous journey across the Aegean and Mediterranean seas.

The power of mobile communications (and news in the digital age) means friends and relatives quickly hear from running updates that their compatriots have found safety in Chancellor Angela Merkel's nation.

They are extremely grateful but, nonetheless, unless safe corridors are opened more refugees and migrants will risk their lives and lose them trying to get to Europe.