Refugees on buses in Hungary; Austria, Germany to take them

Migrants enter a bus, which is supposed to leave to Austria and Germany, at the Keleti trainstation in Budapest, Hungary, September 4, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

A couple from Baghdad, Mohammed and Zahara, who marched with a toddler, said they had been in a Hungarian asylum camp and got roughed up by guards because they refused to be fingerprinted. She said she has family in Belgium and is determined to seek asylum there. They would not give their last names.

Saleh Abdurahman, a Palestinian refugee from Syria who marched from Budapest, said he was set on escaping a Middle East made intolerable by wars that he blames on the United States and Europe.

"We don't want to go to their countries because we'd like to be rich," he said. "We only need to be human beings."

In Syria, a man whose family died when a small rubber boat capsized during a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece buried his wife and two sons in their hometown of Kobani. Photos of the lifeless body of Abdullah Kurdi's 3-year-old son after it washed up on the beach drew the world's attention to the dangers faced by those fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

"He only wanted to go to Europe for the sake of his children," said Suleiman Kurdi, an uncle of the grieving father. "Now that they're dead, he wants to stay here in Kobani next to them."

Across Europe, the refugee crisis is becoming more dramatic.

In Geneva, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday that nearly 5,600 people crossed from Greece to Macedonia a day earlier. That's roughly double the already high 2,500 to 3,000 per day in recent weeks.

"That is a dramatic number," said UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming, saying it was the highest she's heard yet.