Berlin: Thousands more migrants streamed into Germany yesterday greeted with cheers and “welcome” signs as Pope Francis called on every Catholic parish in Europe to take in a refugee family.

In moving scenes the newcomers clutching their children and sparse belongings stepped off trains to applause from well-wishers who held balloons snapped photos and gave them water food and clothes.

“The people here treat us so well they treat us like real human beings not like in Syria” said Mohammad 32 from the devastated town of Qusayr his eyes welling up with tears.

Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War has exposed a growing east-west rift with frontline nation Hungary —which first held back migrants but later sent them on to Austria and Germany — rejecting the EU’s “failed immigration policy”.

Hungary’s conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban who has sought to secure his country’s Serbian border with a fence has voiced concern about mostly Muslim refugees undermining what he said is Europe’s Christian-based identity.

Pope Francis however in a Sunday sermon stressed that it is Christian to help those in desperate need and urged “every parish every religious community every monastery every sanctuary in Europe” to take in a family.

“Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of asylum-seekers fleeing death (as) victims of war and hunger who are hoping to start a new life the gospel calls on us and asks us to be the neighbour of the smallest and the most abandoned to give them concrete hope” he said in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome.

The Vatican’s two parishes would take in two refugee families “in the coming days” he said leading by example for Europe’s more than 50000 Catholic parishes.

The human tragedy of the crisis was brought home for millions worldwide by pictures of the lifeless body of three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi lying on a Turkish beach.

Turkish police officer Mehmet Ciplak who was pictured picking up the toddler’s body has recounted how he prayed the little boy was still alive as he walked towards him and scooped him up from the water’s edge.

“When I approached the baby I said to myself ‘Dear God I hope he’s alive.’ But he showed no signs of life. I was crushed” he told Turkey’s Dogan news agency

“I have a six-year-old son. The moment I saw the baby I thought about my own son and put myself into his father’s place. Words cannot describe what a sad and tragic sight it was.”

The scale of suffering in war-torn Syria has led Germany in recent days to drop normal formalities and allow in vastly higher numbers of refugees.

As train and busloads have kept on coming from Hungary Germany took in another 3000 people by 1200 GMTyesterday and expected 2000 more through the day after about 8000 refugees in total arrived Saturday police said.

In all Europe’s most populous nation expects 800000 new asylum applications this year — four times last year’s total and more than any other EU nation — at a cost of ¤10bn ($11bn).

As refugees got off trains police directed them to waiting buses bound for temporary shelters which have been set up in public buildings hotels and army barracks across the country.

“Say it loud say it clear refugees are welcome here” crowds chanted overnight at the Frankfurt railway station.

In a sign the exodus from Syria shows no sign of abating rescuers in Cyprus said yesterday they had saved more than 100 refugees fleeing the war after their boat ran into trouble off the Mediterranean island.

AFP