Refugee crisis: Joy as thousands reach the end of their journey

Dressed in rags and exhausted, they made it.

Thousands of refugees completed their long walk to freedom last night, arriving in Western Europe to the sounds of applause and met with cups of tea.

Streams of elated families, some carrying shattered children in their arms, others pushing elderly relatives in wheelchairs, were welcomed into Austria and Germany.

Many burst into tears on reaching the journey’s end. Others offered up a simple prayer.

But it marked the emotional end of an unimaginable ordeal which saw them travel across war-torn lands and risk their lives in appalling boats on the high seas.

Many had camped for days in Hungary’s capital Budapest, as a fraught stand-off ensued, after authorities refused to allow them to board trains.

But after Germany and Austria announced they would take responsibility for the influx of people, the Hungarian authorities laid on convoys of buses in the early hours of yesterday, to spirit refugees to the Austrian border.

By the afternoon more than 4,000 people had arrived in Austria, many taken from Budapest’s Keleti train station, while others were picked up attempting to walk along 150 miles of motorway to Vienna.

As refugees arrived in Munich, many locals burst into applause to welcome them.

Police said as many as 10,000 men, women and children were expected to have arrived in Germany by today, while a further 800,000 people could seek refuge this year, after the two countries said they would not stop anyone seeking asylum.

The heart-breaking scale of the refugee crisis was thrown into sharp focus last week when a picture of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi was revealed.

The three-year-old drowned alongside brother Ghalib, the picture of his body being tenderly carried from a Turkish beach shocking the world into action.

It has now emerged Aylan’s last words before drowning were, “daddy, please don’t die”.

Aylan Kurdi who died trying to get to greece from Turkey

Aylan’s aunt, Fatima Kurdi, who lives in Canada, cried as she revealed the devastating detail.

She said when the boat flipped upside down the two boys were in their dad’s arms.

“He tried with all his power to push them up above the water to breathe and they screamed, ‘Daddy, please don’t die’,” she said.

When Aylan’s father, Abdullah, realised Ghalib had died, he let him go.

Ms Kurdi added: “He tried to save Aylan. He looked at him and there was blood coming from his eyes. So he closed his eyes and he let him go.

“He looked around for his wife. She was floating in the water.

“He said, ‘I tried with all my power to save them. I couldn’t’.”

Ms Kurdi, who has lived in Canada for more than 20 years, is trying to reunite the surviving family members in British Columbia,

Meanwhile in the UK, the outrage at the humanitarian crisis, described as the worst since the Second World War, continues to grow.

Yesterday First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pledged £1 million to help refugees, after announcing Scotland should accept 1,000 asylum seekers as a “starting point”.

She said: “The heartbreaking scenes of desperate people fleeing their homes and looking for refuge in Europe, have touched many people in Scotland and I know that there is great support across the country, for us to play our part in offering what help we can.”

Her pledge comes after Archbishop Philip Tartaglia, the Archbishop of Glasgow, slammed the “mean-spirited and unhelpful” approach he claims the UK Government has adopted.

He said: “The UK should be generous in providing a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers; Britain’s policy in the Mediterranean of rescue and deposit elsewhere is mean-spirited and unhelpful to the nations who are bearing the brunt of the migrations especially Italy and Greece.”