Migrants lorry toll rises to 71
Arrests made as baby girl among victims found in truck in Austria
FOUR children, including a baby girl, were among 71 migrants found dead in a truck on an Austrian highway and several people have been arrested in Hungary in connection with the tragedy, Austrian police said.
An Austrian motorway patrol discovered the abandoned truck near the Hungarian border on Thursday, probably at least 24 hours after it had been parked there. The refugees appeared to have been dead for up to two days.
A Syrian travel document was found among the victims but more time is needed to determine whether people of other nationalities were on board, said Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief for the province of Burgenland.
The back door of the truck was not locked but secured shut with wires. Its refrigeration system showed no signs of having been switched on and there were no vents to allow fresh air inside, Doskozil said. The victims had been wearing light summer clothes.
Of the 71 dead, 59 were men, eight were women, and four were children, including a girl estimated at one to two years old and three boys aged roughly eight to10.
Austrian and Hungarian police differed over the number of arrests made in the case.
Mr Doskozil said three people had been taken into custody in Hungary, including one man who is believed to be the owner of the truck and is of Bulgarian-Lebanese origin. The other two are believed to have driven the vehicle. One was described as Bulgarian and the other had a Hungarian identity card.
Hungarian police said they had arrested four men, including three Bulgarians and an Afghan citizen, and had questioned roughly 20 people after conducting house searches.
“We expect that this is the trace that will lead us to the perpetrators,” Mr Doskozil said, making clear that the people being held were not the ring leaders of the trafficking gang.
Authorities were transporting the bodies to different Austrian morgues. One truck carrying around 10 bodies was seen entering a Vienna forensics centre.
The truck in which the bodies were found belongs to a company called Mastermobiliker Ltd, which has been under bankruptcy proceedings since July 2014, according to a Hungarian company register.
The truck bore the logo of what appeared to be a Slovak company, Hyza. Its parent group, Agrofert, said the vehicle was sold to Mastermobiliker in January this year.
About 100,000 migrants, many of them from Syria and other conflict zones in the Middle East, have taken the Balkan route into Europe this year, heading via Serbia for Hungary and Europe’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel. Most then move on to richer countries such as Austria and Germany.
Austria saw asylum requests increase to more than 28,000 in the first six months of 2015 – more than the total for all of 2014.
Mr Doskozil said plans by Hungary to build a 175 kilometre fence to keep out refugees may be contributing to the problem.
“Many people are trying to get to Germany or Austria before it [the fence] is finished,” said Mr Doskozil.