Refugees rush to beat Hungarian border block
ROSZKE, Hungary -- Thousands of desperate refugees from Syria, along with migrants from Africa, Asia and elsewhere are rushing to sneak into Europe, clamoring over the border from Serbia into Hungary before the Hungarian military can complete a new 13-foot-high fence to stem the tide of humanity.
CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata watched them clamber out of long weeds and onto the disused railway tracks near the border town of Roszke. He eventually lost count.
Generations of families, from infants to the elderly and infirm, continue risking their lives for the promise of a better one in Europe.
Everyone D'Agata and his team met said they were fleeing the front lines in Syria.
Resting in the shade of a tree were 20 people from a family that fled the northern Syrian city of Kobani, including nine children as young as three, along with their grandparents.
They left home almost two weeks ago, but their trip was far from over Monday morning -- and Hungary is about to slam the door shut.
The Hungarian president's solution to the refugee crisis is erecting a fence topped with razor wire along about 115 miles of the country's border with Serbia.
Hungarian troops have been racing to finish the fence by the end of the month, and they are just about there.
The refugees and migrants had a tough fight to even reach the border; smuggled from Turkey to Greece, beaten back at the border in Macedonia just to cram onto packed trains to Serbia.
But for people like Mohammed, from Daraa, staying in Syria was a far worse prospect.
"Syria, no life, no food, no water," he told D'Agata, showing him a scar from a barrel bomb he said was dropped by a helicopter.
So Mohammed and thousands of others like him risk everything they've got, which after years of relentless war, isn't very much at all for a lot of people.
Hungary has received almost 150,000 migrants so far this year -- 50,000 this month alone -- but none of them want to stay in the country.
They want to get to Germany, England, Holland or other northern European nations, but they're being stopped, and many of the desperate, confused travellers are turning to anyone they can find -- even the journalists trying to tell their stories -- to ask what they should do next.