Hungarian police attack Syrian refugees with tear gas

Riots broke out at a refugee reception center in Hungary, with police clashing with a group of refugees who arrived there via Serbia, Reuters reports, as carried by the Patria news agency.

Local television showed footage of police using tear gas to disperse a group of refugees. They surrounded about 400 of them near the Roszke border crossing and addressed them using a megaphone. Several dozen refugees crossed into Hungary early this morning, under the fence that the country erected to keep them outside its borders.

"We raised the fence and crossed. We arrived here yesterday. We are hungry, we have no food, no medicine for the children, nothing. Honestly, we are tired," said one of the refugees from Syria.

Hungary yesterday requested additional financial resources from the EU to deal with the refugee crisis, even though it allocated around 20 million euros for the fence it is building to "defend itself" from refugees.

Hungary announced today that it is considering sending the military to its southern border, where a record number of refugees, including many Syrian refugees, are entering the European Union.

Police said a record 2,533 refugees, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, were caught entering Hungary from Serbia on Tuesday.

Some refugees were able to pass unnoticed where the fence is not yet completed on the border with Europe, which is facing its worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Hungary, which is part of the Schengen area, is building a fence along its 175-kilometer border with Serbia in an attempt to stop refugees from entering the country. 

Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said parliament will debate next week whether to deploy the military to the border.

"The Hungarian government and the national security council... considered the issue of how the military could be used to help secure Hungary's border and the EU's border," Kovacs said.

Hungarian police on Wednesday threw tear gas at refugees to prevent about two hundred of them from leaving the main refugee center in Roszke, police spokesman Szabolcs Szenti said. The immigrants refused to give fingerprints and police officers "tried to calm the situation, but the refugees continued shouting," he said, as reported by Index.