Hungary is sending buses to transport migrants to Austria's border after more than 1,000 began walking there earlier on Friday.
They
left Budapest station on foot after a stand-off with police, defying
official efforts to take them to reception centres and register them.
Earlier on Friday another group escaped along railway tracks in Bicske, to the west, from a train stopped by police.
European Union states are struggling to agree on how to deal with the crisis.
Image copyrightAP
The surprise announcement by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of
staff late on Friday night followed several days of chaotic scenes.
Janos
Lazar said Hungary would offer buses to those walking along the main
motorway to Vienna, as well as to migrants still at Budapest's Keleti
railway station.
The buses would take people to Hegyeshalom, on the border with Austria.
Hungary
had not yet had a response from the Austrian government so he did not
know whether they would be allowed in to Austria, he added.
"We
are taking this step so Hungary's transportation is not paralysed
during the next 24 hours," Mr Lazar said, according to the Associated
Press news agency.
Media caption"I
was walking behind a woman pushing a pushchair... also alongside her
was a four-year-old boy and a daughter who was about six years old",
reports Matthew Price
Image copyrightReutersImage caption
Several migrants on the march have held large photos of German Chancellor Angela Merkel
It was unclear whether migrants would be happy to
get on the buses, after several hundred were encouraged to get on a
train on Thursday that did not then head to Austria.
The BBC's
Matthew Price, walking with the migrants, said that as night fell, many
continued to walk, but others - including a family with five children -
appeared to stop for the night on the hard shoulder, or in adjacent
fields.
Hungary has become a major transit nation for people fleeing the Middle East and Africa, seeking to reach north and west Europe.
Media captionRiot police fired tear gas in an attempt to control the migrants, and held back journalists at a refugee camp in Roszke, Hungary
Also on Friday:
The body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, images of whose body sparked global outrage, was buried in Kobane, Syria
There were clashes at Keleti station
after far-right extremists threw two firecrackers towards migrants,
sparking an angry response
Hundreds of people have broken out of a
refugee camp at Roszke near the Serbian border and are being pursued by
police. Video from the camp showed clashes between migrants trying to
break out and riot police, who used spray
Hungarian MPs approved tougher border controls and penalties for migrants trying to pass through to Germany
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