Europe reeling from more migrant deaths
Additional bodies found in truck; 150 drownings reported.
Europe reeled from fresh shocks in its escalating migration crisis Friday, with reports of 150 drownings in the Mediterranean and news that far more migrant corpses had been found crammed in an abandoned refrigeration truck in Austria than first thought. Damage to the vehicle’s side raised the possibility that victims had struggled to escape.
Authorities in Austria and Hungary said at least four people had been arrested in connection with the truck as they disclosed that the remains of 71 people had been found inside, including four children, and that at least some had come from Syria.
On Thursday officials had estimated as many as 50 people had been packed in the vehicle, before they discovered additional bodies.
The scope of the migrant crisis, the biggest wave to hit Europe since World War II, was further amplified Friday by a report from the U.N. refugee agency estimating a 40 percent jump this year in the number of people fleeing to the continent by boat compared with all of 2014. Most are escaping war and strife in the Middle East and Africa.
The deadly perils of crossing the Mediterranean, already well known, were reinforced by news from Libyan and international relief officials that 150 people had drowned off western Libya after their boats sank Thursday.
The exact toll was unclear, but it had the potential to be among the highest this summer for the legions of desperate families trying to reach European shores.
Jamal Naji Zubia, the director of the foreign media office for the Tripoli-based government of Libya, said the drownings occurred near the port city of Zuwarah, in the far west of the country near the Tunisian border. Zuwarah is a frequently used departure point for migrants and refugees trying to make the Mediterranean crossing, often in packed fishing boats or rubber dinghies.
Still, much of the focus in Europe on Friday was on the relatively new danger of death from smuggling overland, crystallized by the mystery of the people found in the abandoned truck in Austria.
Authorities there reported that three boys ages 7 to 10, and a toddler girl, were among the 71 people decomposing in the truck, which was abandoned east of Vienna on Wednesday and discovered 24 hours later. The other passengers included 59 men and eight women.
Officials at Hyza, the Slovakian company that formerly owned the truck, said its cooling system was not functional when they sold it. Austrian authorities said they had determined that there was no ventilation on the sides of the truck.
The U.N. refugee agency report said the number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe had reached 310,000 this year, up from 219,000 in 2014.
Close to 200,000 people have landed in Greece this year and around 110,000 more have reached Italy, Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the refugee agency told reporters in Geneva.
More than 2,500 people have died at sea this year, not including those believed to be victims in Thursday’s sinking off Libya. In 2014, 3,500 died or were lost while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
At the root of many of the deaths are the practices of human traffickers who overload boats, cars, trucks and vans with those willing and able to pay the high cost to cross the Mediterranean or European borders.
Austrian authorities believe that is what happened to the migrants whose corpses were discovered in the truck, parked in the emergency lane of a highway southeast of Vienna.