Hungarian camerawoman fired for kicking, tripping refugee

A Hungarian camerawoman was fired Tuesday after shocking footage emerged of her intentionally tripping refugees fleeing police near the country's border as she covered the crisis for a local news outlet, reports Mashable.

The incident took place near the border village of Röszke, where migrants and refugees have been stranded for days. Hungarian authorities are struggling to process the large number of people en route to other locations in Europe. Most are trying to pass through Hungary in an attempt to seek asylum elsewhere.

A journalist standing nearby captured footage of a female videographer, seen wearing a blue shirt and face mask in the clip below, intentionally tripping a man running with a child clutched in his arms. The man falls to the ground face first, his child tumbling into the grass.

Another clip captured the videographer kicking two other people, one of which appears to be a child.

Footage that appears to come from the woman's own camera shows the man and child running away from a police officer shouting, "Baby, baby, baby," acknowledging the fact he is carrying a child.

After the video emerged, N1TV announced that the camerawoman had been fired in a Facebook post.

"Our N1TV colleague today behaved unacceptably at the Röszke collection point," N1TV Editor in Chief Szabolcs Kisber wrote in the post, noting the woman's working relationship with the company has ended and they consider the case closed.

While the station declined to identify the camerawoman, other Hungarian journalists reported that the woman seen in the footage was Hungarian journalist Petra László.

Hungary's leading party has been clear on their intentions to keep refugees and migrants out of the country.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced fresh efforts to complete a fence to seal the country's southern border. The 12-foot-high fence is being built on the border with Serbia and will stretch 110 miles when complete. Several coils of razor-wire are stretched out along the whole border but it has been regularly breached by migrants, who usually crawl under it. The higher barrier has only been erected in some sections.

Treatment of refugees and migrants entering the country has caused concern in recent weeks. The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR noted a lack of proper reception facilities in the border area and said humanitarian aid needs to be stepped up.

UNHCR Spokesman Babar Baloch told the Associated Press on Tuesday that "the border police are not trained to deal with the refugees."

"When people come in you need to receive them properly. There are women and children and they are just kept in the open. Temperatures are going down as well so we need to have a system where these people receive proper care," he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people, mostly Syrian refugees, waited in fields near the border Tuesday. Hungarian police formed a line to try to stop them from leaving, but several broke through to continue their journey further into Europe.

Hungarian police have detained more than 169,000 migrants this year, including 2,706 on Monday. In that same period, the Migration Office has received nearly 158,000 asylum requests.