Video shows refugees in Hungary "fed like animals"

Video shows refugees in Hungary "fed like animals"

It "shows some 150 people wildly scrambling for bags of sandwiches thrown at them by Hungarian police wearing helmets and hygiene masks in a fenced-in enclosure inside a big hall," the report said, adding that "women and children were caught in the chaotic scrum as hungry people frantically tried to catch the bread flying through the air," while "many migrants too far back in the crowd climbed onto the fence, waving and shouting to get the officers' attention."

"It was like animals being fed in a pen, like Guantanamo in Europe," Klaus Kufner, a volunteer who was with the woman who recorded the images, Michaela Spritzendorfer , told AFP.

Reuters said that the video posted on the YouTube channel of Austrian politician Alexander Spritzendorfer was supposedly taken by his wife Michaela Spritzendorfer-Ehrenhauser.

"It was inhumane and it really speaks for these people that they didn't fight over the food despite being clearly very hungry," said Michaela Spritzendorfer, according to AFP.

The agency noted that UNHCR "criticized the dire conditions at the Roszke camp earlier this week, with Hungary's hardline stance against migrants also angering other EU countries." Hungarian police on Friday told responded to Reuters by email to say they had launched an "emergency inquiry into the matter, describing it as a fact-finding investigation, without elaborating."

Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said the footage showed a detention center where people spend only a few hours in an "optimal case" but can also remain there for up to two days in a procedure sanctioned by the European Union.

"I can see policemen who have been performing their duties for months, trying to take care of 23,000 migrants arriving continuously day by day while there is no co-operation whatsoever on their part. I can see they are trying to maintain order among those who are unable to line up for food," he said.