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.

Adapted from AFP