VIENNA/MUNICH Trainloads of migrants arrived in Austria and Germany from Hungary on Monday as European Union asylum rules collapsed under the strain of a wave of migration unprecedented in the EU. 
 
 As thousands of men, women and children - many fleeing Syria's civil war - continued to arrive from the east, authorities let thousands of undocumented people travel on towards Germany, the favored destination for many. 
 
 The influx is a crisis for the European Union, which has eliminated border controls between 26 "Schengen area" states but requires asylum seekers to apply in the first EU country they reach - something that is often ignored as migrants race from the fringes of the bloc to its more prosperous heart. 
 
 In line with EU rules, an Austrian police spokesman said only those who had not already requested asylum in Hungary would be allowed through - but the sheer pressure of numbers prevailed, and trains were allowed to move on. 
 
 "Thank God nobody asked for a passport ... No police, no problem," said Khalil, 33, an English teacher from Kobani in Syria. His wife held their sick baby daughter, coughing and crying in her arms, at the Vienna station where police stood by as hundred of migrants raced to board trains for Germany. 
 
 Khalil said he had bought train tickets in Budapest for Hamburg, northern Germany, where he felt sure of a better welcome after traipsing across the Balkans and Hungary. 
 
 "Syrians call (Chancellor Angela) Merkel 'Mama Merkel'," he said, referring to the German leader's relatively compassionate response so far to the migrant crisis. 
 
 Late on Monday, a train from Vienna to Hamburg on which migrants were traveling was met in Passau, Germany, by police wearing bullet-proof vests, according to a Reuters witness. 
 
 Police entered the train and migrants were asked to accompany them to be registered. About 40 people were seen on the platform. 
 
 Police said they would be taken to a police station for registration. 
 
 CENTRAL CHALLENGE 
 
 Merkel, whose country expects some 800,000 migrants this year, said the crisis could destroy the Schengen open borders accord if other EU countries did not take a greater share. 
 
 "If we don't succeed in fairly distributing refugees then of course the Schengen question will be on the agenda for many," she told a news conference in Berlin. "We stand before a huge national challenge. That will be a central challenge not only for days or months but for a long period of time." 
 
 But it is far from certain her view will prevail when EU ministers hold a crisis meeting on Sept. 14. Britain, which is outside the Schengen zone, says the border-free system is part of the problem, and a bloc of central European countries plans to oppose any binding quotas. 
 
 Refugees who managed to board the trains heading west on Monday mixed with well-heeled business travelers and tourists, some of whom were angry over the delays to their journey. 
 
 "I have a plane to catch from Vienna Airport. I took the train because of the road checks and the traffic jam ... and now this? Are you kidding me?” said Orsolya Jakab, 35, a Hungarian accountant. 
 
 Outside Vienna station, thousands of supporters of the migrants chanted: "Refugees are welcome here". 
 
 "These people need help, they have come from a horrendous situation, we should not think twice about helping them," said Ottwin Schober, a retiree from Vienna who had been moved by the discovery of a truckload of 71 dead migrants in Austria last week. 
 
 "WE ESCAPED DEATH" 
 
 Austrian authorities have stopped hundreds of refugees and arrested five traffickers along the highway from Hungary where the abandoned truck was found near the Hungarian border. 
 
 Interior Ministry official Konrad Kogler denied the clampdown, which includes increased checks on the eastern borders, violated the Schengen accord on free movement. 
 
 "These are not border controls," said Kogler. "It is about ensuring that people are safe, that they are not dying, on the one hand, and about traffic security, on the other." 
 
 At Munich, in southern Germany, police said around 400 migrants had arrived on a train from Hungary via Austria. 
 
 “There are advanced reports that at least one or two further trains ... are coming which could have a total of three, four or five hundred refugees on board," police official Juergen Vanselow, told Reuters TV. 
 
 At Munich station in southern Germany, two trains arrived from Hungary carrying several hundred mostly Syrian refugees. 
 
 Men, women and children smiled with relief on reaching German soil, and police shepherded them from the platform to a station outbuilding to be registered. They were then taken to waiting buses outside, to be transferred to a reception center in a former barracks in the north of the city. 
 
 Eighteen-year-old Syrian Mohammad al-Azaawi said he had abandoned his engineering degree and fled the country after being wounded by a car bomb. He showed reporters scars on his stomach. 
 
 His brother Ahmed said they had paid up to 3,000 euros ($3,365) to make their way via Turkey, Greece, Madedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. The family had had to sell their house to raise the money. 
 
 "We escaped death in Syria. We want to stay here for a better future," he said. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Marton Dunai, Shadia Nasralla, Anna McIntosh, Heinz-Peter Bader, Noah Barkin and Michael Shields; Writing by Robin Pomeroy and Gareth Jones; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Toni Reinhold) ||||| REYKJAVIK (AFP) - 
 
 More than 10,000 Icelanders said Monday on Facebook they were ready to welcome Syrian refugees into their homes after the government said it would only let in a handful. 
 
 An Icelandic author and professor, Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir, on Sunday urged fellow citizens to speak out on Facebook if they wanted Iceland, a country of around 330,000 inhabitants, to take in more Syrian refugees. 
 
 By Monday afternoon more than 10,000 people had answered her call. 
 
 "I'm a single mother with a 6-year-old son... We can take a child in need. I'm a teacher and would teach the child to speak, read and write Icelandic and adjust to Icelandic society. We have clothes, a bed, toys and everything a child needs. I would of course pay for the airplane ticket," wrote Hekla Stefansdottir in a post. 
 
 Many offered housing, food, clothes and help integrating into Icelandic society. 
 
 "I think people have had enough of seeing news stories from the Mediterranean and refugee camps of dying people and they want something done now," Bjorgvinsdottir told Icelandic public television RUV. 
 
 Welfare Minister Eyglo Hardardottir told RUV that authorities were studying the Facebook offers and would consider increasing the number of refugees accepted under a humanitarian quota, currently capped at 50 for this year and next. 
 
 "I have made it clear that I don't want to name a maximum figure, but that we (will) explore every avenue available in welcoming more refugees," she said. 
 
 Official statistics show that the volcanic island located in the North Atlantic welcomed 1,117 immigrants in 2014. 
 
 ? 2015 AFP ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Damian Grammaticas reports from Budapest: ''Their way barred, their frustrations boiled over'' 
 
 Hundreds of migrants are stranded outside a major railway station in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, after police sealed off the terminal to stop them travelling through the EU. 
 
 Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs defended the closure, saying Hungary was trying to enforce EU law. 
 
 Thousands of people, many fleeing war and persecution, are trying to reach northern Europe to claim asylum. 
 
 EU states are engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity to find a solution. 
 
 The crisis has highlighted the limitations of the EU's system for coping with refugees, the BBC's Chris Morris says. 
 
 Under an EU rule known as the Dublin Regulation, refugees should seek asylum in the first EU country they enter. But with countries such as Italy and Greece saying they cannot cope with the numbers, many have headed north. 
 
 Hungary had earlier appeared to abandon efforts to register migrants, allowing huge numbers to board trains at Keleti station in east Budapest and travel to Vienna and southern Germany on Monday. 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Many families bedded down near Keleti station, wondering what to do next 
 
 Analysis by Chris Morris, BBC's Europe correspondent 
 
 The European Union is supposed to have a common asylum system but at the moment it's not worth much more than the paper it's written on. 
 
 Many of the migrants currently trying to reach Germany via Hungary probably arrived first in Greece. But they left the EU to travel through Macedonia and Serbia before crossing back into Hungary. Now the Hungarian government says it is trying to apply EU law, but it clearly doesn't want them to stay. 
 
 In other words the system is close to breaking point and needs reform. Most of the ideas being discussed at the moment - a fairer distribution of asylum seekers around Europe, much more help for Greece and Italy to register arriving migrants, and more effective action to send failed asylum seekers home - have already been approved by EU leaders. 
 
 But much of this emerging policy has yet to be put into practice, and new rules are rapidly being overtaken by events. 
 
 But police evacuated the station on Tuesday, leaving about 1,000 migrants outside. 
 
 The station later allowed non-migrant passengers to enter via a side entrance, but lines of police kept migrants out. 
 
 An angry crowd chanted "Germany, Germany" and waved train tickets. 
 
 One day across destination Europe 
 
 The migrants who risk everything for a better life 
 
 Image copyright Guardia Civil 
 
 This West African entered the Spanish territory of Ceuta from Morocco curled up next to a car engine. Read the full story here. 
 
 Many protesters in Budapest complained that they had paid hundreds of euros for tickets to Austria or Germany. 
 
 One 20-year-old woman from Aleppo, Syria, named only as Marah, said her family had bought six tickets for a train to Vienna. 
 
 "They should find a solution," she told Reuters news agency. "We are thousands here, where should we go?" 
 
 Rights group Hungarian Helsinki Committee described the situation at Keleti station as "very tense and unpredictable". 
 
 Correspondents say Hungary's action appeared prompted in part by pressure from other EU states struggling to cope with the influx of migrants. 
 
 About 3,650 arrived in Vienna by train on Monday, many intending to carry on to Germany. German police said 3,500 asylum-seekers arrived in Bavaria on Tuesday while Belgium and Sweden also reported a surge in migrant numbers. 
 
 Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told reporters on Tuesday that Hungary would now register all migrants and send those it considered to be economic migrants back to the state from which they entered the country. 
 
 Prime Minister Viktor Orban is due to meet senior EU officials on Thursday in Brussels. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Migrants wave their train tickets outside Keleti station 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Hungarian police briefly closed the station 
 
 Image caption These Syrian refugees arrived in Vienna on Tuesday on a train from Budapest 
 
 The number of migrants entering Europe has reached record levels, with 107,500 arriving in July alone. 
 
 Germany expects to take in 800,000 migrants this year - four times last year's total. 
 
 German Labour Minister Andrea Nahles said the influx meant between 240,000 and 460,000 more people could be entitled to social benefits next year, costing the state billions of euros. 
 
 Papers call for EU solidarity over refugees 
 
 Why is EU struggling with migrants and asylum? 
 
 Full coverage of Europe migrant crisis 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Angela Merkel says refugees should be fairly divided among EU member states 
 
 The German government has already said it will allow Syrians arriving from other EU states to apply for asylum. But on Tuesday, a spokesman said the Dublin Regulation had not been suspended. 
 
 "Dublin rules are still valid and we expect European member states to stick to them," an interior ministry spokesman said. 
 
 Meanwhile, the EU's Frontex border agency said a trade in fake Syrian passports had emerged, mainly in Turkey. 
 
 "They know Syrians get the right to asylum in the European Union," Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri told French radio. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The rules governing immigration to the EU - explained in 90 seconds 
 
 Risks for migrants travelling through Europe were highlighted last week by the deaths of 71 people found in a lorry that had travelled to Austria from Budapest. 
 
 As a result, Austria has reintroduced border controls at main crossings from Hungary. 
 
 10 days of the migrant crisis ||||| BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary suspended all rail traffic Tuesday from its main terminal in Budapest and cleared the train station of hundreds of migrants trying to board trains for Austria and Germany — the hoped-for end destinations in their flight from turmoil in the Mideast and Asia. 
 
 A young Syrian woman sits besides a road after making her way from Austria to Germany at the highway A3 in Pocking near Passau, Germany, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. Hundreds of migrants are arriving every... (Associated Press) 
 
 Refugee children sleep in the surrounding green area of the Keleti railway station in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday morning Sept. 1, 2015. Thousands of exhausted refugees and migrants camp around Budapest’s... (Associated Press) 
 
 Migrants sleep at a park where hundreds of migrants are temporarily residing in Belgrade, Serbia, early Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. Migrants sleep in this park in the Serbian capital while waiting for an... (Associated Press) 
 
 A train containing a number of migrants leaves heading towards Munich, Germany at the Keleti Railway Station in Budapest, Hungary, Monday, Aug. 31, 2015. Migrants possessing valid documents and a train... (Associated Press) 
 
 Migrants wait to board the train that will take them towards Munich, Germany at the Keleti Railway Station in Budapest, Hungary, Monday, Aug. 31, 2015. Migrants possessing valid documents and a train... (Associated Press) 
 
 A boy flashes a victory sign as he arrives with other refugees in a train from Budapest at the main train station in the Austrian capital Vienna Monday, Aug. 31, 2015. (AP Photo/Christian Bruna) (Associated Press) 
 
 Migrants hold their train tickets as they wait to board a train to Germany at the Keleti Railway Station in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. (Zoltan Balogh/MTI via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 Refugee children sleep on the outdoor floor of the Keleti railway station in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. Thousands of exhausted refugees and migrants camp around Budapest’s main train station... (Associated Press) 
 
 Migrants wait to board a train to Germany at the Keleti Railway Station in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, Sept, 1, 2015. (Zoltan Balogh/MTI via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 Migrants wait to board a train to Germany at the Keleti Railway Station in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday morning, Sept. 1, 2015. (Zoltan Balogh/MTI via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 Refugees try to navigate their way using smartphones as they cross the border from Serbia, in Roszke, Hungary, Monday, Aug. 31, 2015. Migrants fearful of death at sea in overcrowded and flimsy boats have... (Associated Press) 
 
 Migrants sleep at a park where hundreds of migrants are temporarily residing in Belgrade, Serbia, early Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. Migrants sleep in this park in the Serbian capital while waiting for an... (Associated Press) 
 
 Migrants wait to board a train to Germany at the Keleti Railway Station in Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday morning, Sept 1, 2015. (Zoltan Balogh/MTI via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 Police officers enter the central train station where trains arrive from Budapest, Hungary, carrying migrants into Vienna, Austria, on Monday, Aug. 31, 2015. Some hundreds of migrants arrive by train... (Associated Press) 
 
 Migrants chanting "Freedom! Freedom!" congregated outside the station after being pushed out of the building, joining hundreds more in what has become a transit zone and place of refuge for those fleeing Syria's war and other hotspots. 
 
 Police acted shortly after authorities announced over station loudspeakers that all trains would be stopped from leaving for an indefinite period of time. Hundreds of passengers with travel documents and tickets remained in the cavernous station, some staring at information boards still showing arrival and departure times. 
 
 Scuffles broke out earlier Tuesday morning as some of the hundreds of migrants pushed toward metal gates at the platform where a train was to leave for Vienna and Munich, and were blocked by police. Several said they spent hundreds of euros (dollars) for tickets after police told them they would be allowed free passage. 
 
 The closure of the station appeared prompted in part by pressure from other European Union nations trying to cope with the influx of thousands of migrants flowing through Hungary. Europe has been overwhelmed by a surge of migrants, with over 332,000 arriving so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. 
 
 Police in Vienna said Tuesday that 3,650 migrants arrived Monday from Hungary at the city's Westbahnhof station, with most continuing on toward Germany. 
 
 "Allowing them to simply board in Budapest ... and watching as they are taken to the neighbor (Austria) — that's not politics," Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann told state broadcaster ORF. 
 
 While critical of Hungary, Austrian authorities also acknowledged they were overwhelmed by the thousands who arrived by rail Monday evening. Police said they did not have the manpower to carry out effective controls, which normally would include turning back to Hungary those without proper travel documents who do not ask for asylum in Austria. 
 
 But in their search for human traffickers, Austrian authorities re-imposed controls at some of the main road border crossings from Hungary. Hungary's Utinform, a traffic news agency, said vehicles entering Austria at the Hegyeshalom crossing on the main highway from Budapest to Vienna were backed up 6 kilometers (3½ miles) on Tuesday. 
 
 Many of the migrants had entered Europe through Greece and then traveled north through Macedonia and Serbia before reaching Hungary. 
 
 In Geneva, the U.N.'s children's agency said the number of women and children fleeing through Macedonia has tripled in the past three months — up to 3,000 people a day are passing through and roughly one in eight is a pregnant woman. 
 
 Greece's coast guard, meanwhile, said Tuesday it had rescued more than 1,000 migrants from the sea off its eastern Aegean islands in the last 24 hours. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers George Jahn in Vienna, Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece and Jamie Keaten in Geneva contributed
– Amid scenes of chaos in Europe and fresh attempts to seal borders, the people of Iceland have asked if they can do more to help. Some 10,000 people out of a population of 330,000 have as of Monday joined a campaign to urge the government to accept more Syrian refugees—and even offered space in their homes, the Telegraph and AFP report. "I think people have had enough of seeing news stories from the Mediterranean and refugee camps of dying people and they want something done now," says author Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir, who launched the campaign Sunday after the Icelandic government said it was only able to help 50 refugees. What one resident had to say: "I'm a single mother with a 6-year-old son ... We can take a child in need. ... We have clothes, a bed, toys and everything a child needs. I would of course pay for the airplane ticket." More on the crisis: All trains from the main station in Budapest, Hungary were halted today, the day after thousands of people, including many Syrians fleeing the civil war, were allowed to board trains north to Austria and Germany without the proper documents, the AP reports. When trains from Budapest arrived in Vienna last night, overwhelmed authorities allowed the passengers to disembark and disperse. Thousands of Austrians outside the station carried signs welcoming them and some had brought food for the hungry travelers. "They have been traveling so long and must be very hungry and they have been treated so shabbily,” a social worker tells the New York Times. "We felt we had to do something," she says. "It's a small thing but maybe it will help." Hundreds more people arrived in Germany last night on trains from Budapest last night. The country is the preferred destination of many and chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that the European Union's open-borders agreement could be in danger if other countries fail to take their fair share of refugees, Reuters reports. EU rules state that refugees should register in the first country they arrive in, but this protocol has been widely ignored and Germany says it has now been suspended for those fleeing the Syrian conflict, reports the BBC. (Police say they have found out how 71 people found dead in an abandoned truck in Austria died.)