Several hundred refugees set off from central Belgrade on Tuesday morning, heading in the direction of the Hungarian border, Reuters witnesses said.

 

The large crowd of people were seen walking northwards along the city's Sava river, stopping occasionally to negotiate with police.

 

Some 7,000 migrants, most fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, are trapped in Serbia, prevented from continuing further into Europe by fences now running the length of the Hungarian-Serbian border.

 

Many migrants in Belgrade, most of whom bed down in makeshift camps by the city's central station, had thought Hungary's referendum last weekend on whether to accept European migrant quotas presaged an opening of the border.

 

A large group of refugees who left Belgrade's camps last month got as far as the northern city of Novi Sad, from where they were taken to reception centers on the Serbian side of the Hungarian border.