Story highlights
- Hungarian police stop and encircle about half the fleeing refugees and migrants
- Hundreds of migrants frustrated at being forced to wait in a holding area stage a breakout
- They run across corn and sunflower fields, hoping to evade police
On the Hungarian-Serbian border (CNN)Dramatic scenes unfolded Tuesday as hundreds of frustrated migrants broke through police lines at a holding camp near the town of Roszke in Hungary.
The people -- mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan -- had complained about uncomfortable conditions in the camp and not knowing what would happen to them next.
As they burst through the police lines, some parents carried children on their shoulders, struggling to make their way across the rough ground near Roszke.
They walked and hiked about 4 miles, many dropping their possessions on the ground. Two kids from one family lost the shoes they were wearing. They walked over a train track and rocks barefoot for miles.
Hungarian police raced after the fleeing migrants, some of whom may be refugees, and at some point the group was split in half.
Later Tuesday, police stopped and encircled half the fleeing migrants and brought them food and water. Some of the captured migrants reportedly spoke to the rest of the group, telling them that they had no choice but to trust the Hungarian authorities.
The migrants said they had been told buses would take them to another area where they would not be fingerprinted. They expected to later get on trains they hoped would take them to Austria and finally to Germany.
Earlier in the day, scuffles broke out as migrants forced to wait in the holding area expressed their frustration. Many cannot understand why, having reached the European Union, they are not receiving a warmer welcome.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A woman cries after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea about 15 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on July 25, 2017. More than 6,600 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in January 2018, according to the UN migration agency, and more than 240 people died on the Mediterranean Sea during that month.
Hide Caption
1 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Refugees and migrants get off a fishing boat at the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey in October 2015.
Hide Caption
2 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Hide Caption
3 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants step over dead bodies while being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya in October 2016. Agence France-Presse photographer Aris Messinis was on a Spanish rescue boat that encountered several crowded migrant boats. Messinis said the rescuers counted 29 dead bodies -- 10 men and 19 women, all between 20 and 30 years old. "I've (seen) in my career a lot of death," he said. "I cover war zones, conflict and everything. I see a lot of death and suffering, but this is something different. Completely different."
Hide Caption
4 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Authorities stand near the body of 2-year-old Alan Kurdi on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey, in September 2015. Alan, his brother and their mother drowned while fleeing Syria. This photo was shared around the world, often with a Turkish hashtag that means "Flotsam of Humanity."
Hide Caption
5 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants board a train at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, after the station was reopened in September 2015.
Hide Caption
6 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Children cry as migrants in Greece try to break through a police cordon to cross into Macedonia in August 2015. Thousands of migrants -- most of them fleeing Syria's bitter conflict -- were stranded in a no-man's land on the border.
Hide Caption
7 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
The Kusadasi Ilgun, a sunken 20-foot boat, lies in waters off the Greek island of Samos in November 2016.
Hide Caption
8 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants bathe outside near a makeshift shelter in an abandoned warehouse in Subotica, Serbia, in January 2017.
Hide Caption
9 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A police officer in Calais, France, tries to prevent migrants from heading for the Channel Tunnel to England in June 2015.
Hide Caption
10 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A migrant walks past a burning shack in the southern part of the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, France, in March 2016. Part of the camp was being demolished -- and the inhabitants relocated -- in response to unsanitary conditions at the site.
Hide Caption
11 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants stumble as they cross a river north of Idomeni, Greece, attempting to reach Macedonia on a route that would bypass the border-control fence in March 2016.
Hide Caption
12 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
In September 2015, an excavator dumps life vests that were previously used by migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Hide Caption
13 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
The Turkish coast guard helps refugees near Aydin, Turkey, after their boat toppled en route to Greece in January 2016.
Hide Caption
14 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A woman sits with children around a fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni in March 2016.
Hide Caption
15 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A column of migrants moves along a path between farm fields in Rigonce, Slovenia, in October 2015.
Hide Caption
16 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A ship crowded with migrants flips onto its side in May 2016 as an Italian navy ship approaches off the coast of Libya. Passengers had rushed to the port side, a shift in weight that proved too much. Five people died and more than 500 were rescued.
Hide Caption
17 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Refugees break through a barbed-wire fence on the Greece-Macedonia border in February 2016, as tensions boiled over regarding new travel restrictions into Europe.
Hide Caption
18 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Policemen try to disperse hundreds of migrants by spraying them with fire extinguishers during a registration procedure in Kos, Greece, in August 2015.
Hide Caption
19 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A member of the humanitarian organization Sea-Watch holds a migrant baby who drowned following the capsizing of a boat off Libya in May 2016.
Hide Caption
20 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A migrant in Gevgelija, Macedonia, tries to sneak onto a train bound for Serbia in August 2015.
Hide Caption
21 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the Mediterranean from a crowded wooden boat during a rescue operation about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, in August 2016.
Hide Caption
22 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Refugees rescued off the Libyan coast get their first sight of Sardinia as they sail in the Mediterranean Sea toward Cagliari, Italy, in September 2015.
Hide Caption
23 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Local residents and rescue workers help migrants from the sea after a boat carrying them sank off the island of Rhodes, Greece, in April 2015.
Hide Caption
24 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Investigators in Burgenland, Austria, inspect an abandoned truck that contained the bodies of refugees who died of suffocation in August 2015. The 71 victims -- most likely fleeing war-ravaged Syria -- were 60 men, eight women and three children.
Hide Caption
25 of 26
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Syrian refugees sleep on the floor of a train car taking them from Macedonia to the Serbian border in August 2015. How to help the ongoing migrant crisis
Hide Caption
26 of 26
Some of the migrants also tussled with police on Monday. Police have been blocking a road from the holding site to a transit camp where they can register as refugees and continue their journeys.
Hungary has been at the forefront of Europe's migrant crisis in recent days.
Many of the refugees and migrants arriving there from Serbia -- having been on the road for weeks in some cases -- are afraid they will get stuck in Hungary and be unable to carry on their journey to their preferred destinations in Western Europe.
Some who have made it farther north have also complained of poor conditions in the holding areas and transit camps in Hungary.
Hungary's government has said it is just trying to enforce EU rules on the movement of migrants without proper documentation.
