Thousands more migrants pour into Austria

Thousands of migrants on board buses and trains over the weekend have flooded into Austria from countries unable or unwilling to cope with the human tide fleeing war and poverty.

Austrian police said more than 11,000 entered the country on Saturday, and another 4700 arrived on Sunday through the Nickelsdorf border post from Hungary.

Most of the migrants had made the gruelling journey across the Balkans into western Europe.

Croatia said 21,000 entered its territory in the past four days, while the Austrian Red Cross said 2000 made it into Germany by avoiding border posts.

The bulk of the migrants are fleeing the war in Syria, with the European Union receiving almost a quarter of a million asylum requests in the three months to June.

Germany alone expects up to a million asylum seekers this year, but the country's Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the EU should in the future take a finite number of migrants, and send the rest back to a safe country in their home regions.

The continent's biggest migratory flow since the end of World War II has dug a deep rift between western and eastern EU members over how to distribute the migrants.

The crisis has raised questions over the fate of the Schengen agreement allowing borderless travel across most countries within the 28-nation bloc, with several of them imposing border controls.

Hungary's right-wing government has faced international criticism over violent clashes with migrants and a hastily erected fence along its frontier with Serbia.

Late on Friday Hungarian authorities began transporting thousands of migrants straight to the border with Austria, an apparent bid to move them out of their territory as quickly as possible.

On Sunday, Hungary reopened its main border crossing with Serbia.

After the country shut its border crossings to migrants, most flooded into Croatia, which within days announced that it could not cope with the flow and began to redirect the migrants back to Hungary or towards Slovenia.

Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia are all EU members, but only the latter two belong to the passport-free Schengen zone.

In the meantime, the Croatian and Hungarian authorities have co-ordinated their efforts on the ground.

Hungarian police said nearly 5000 people entered the country on Saturday, and thousands more were on their way on Sunday to Austria.

More than 2600 people have died among the nearly half a million who have braved perilous trips across the Mediterranean to reach Europe so far this year.

European Union interior ministers are set to meet again on Tuesday, after an emergency summit on Wednesday.

European leaders also called for more action to tackle the problem within Turkey and the Middle East.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said the bloc was earmarking aid of "up to one billion euros" ($1.57 billion) to encourage Syrian refugees in Turkey to stay there, while Austria and Germany issued a joint call for UN countries to contribute an extra five billion euros to help refugees living in camps in Lebanon and Jordan.

Of the more than four million Syrians who have fled their country, nearly half have sought shelter in Turkey, while more than a million are now living in Lebanon and at least 600,000 in Jordan.