Early on Wednesday, the AP news agency reported the number of refugees stranded outside the Keleti station had swollen to 3,000 as citizen patrols were brought in to assist police to keep order.

Volunteer groups usually accustomed to providing food, clothing and medical assistance to a few hundred migrants at a time were struggling with large numbers of people crammed outside the station’s main entrance. On Tuesday, hundreds of people demanding to travel to Germany faced off with police outside the station, as new figures highlighted the unprecedented scale of Europe’s refugee crisis.

More than 350,000 people, many from war-torn Syria, have made the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean so far this year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Police cleared and briefly closed the station late on Tuesday, after thousands of refugees boarded trains for Germany and Austria on Monday, but later re-opened it to tourists and residents