Up to 50 migrants ‘suffocated’ in truck found in Austria

At least 20 migrants, and possibly up to 50, have been found dead on Thursday inside a lorry in eastern Austria, police said, with indications they had suffocated.

A police spokesman told a news conference carried on Austrian television he could not yet put an exact figure on the number of victims inside the vehicle.

“We can assume that it could be 20 people who died. It could also be 40, it could be 50 people,” he said.

According to the Krone newspaper, the bodies were discovered on Thursday morning on the Austria's A4 motorway between Neusiedl and Parndorf.

The truck had been abandoned on the hard shoulder of the road near Parndorf.

Road employees spotted the lorry and alerted the police. Detectives then made the horrific discovery. A search for the driver is under way.

Those inside might have already been dead when the vehicle crossed into the country between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, local police have said.

The abandoned refrigerated lorry, which had been near Hungary’s capital Budapest on Wednesday, was found by an Austrian motorway patrol.

“One can maybe assume that the deaths occurred one-and-a-half to two days ago,” Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief in the province of Burgenland, told a news conference, adding that “many things” indicated they were already dead when they crossed the border.

Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, denounced the people smugglers responsible and said: “Today is a dark day.” She said Austria would adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards the mafia gangs responsible for the tragedy.

“Human smugglers are criminals,” she said in a statement. “Those who still think that they are gentle helpers of refugees are beyond saving.”

“They are not concerned with the welfare of the migrants. They care only about profit,” she added.

The truck has a Hungarian number plate, and Hungarian police are working with Austrian police to track down the driver, prime minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said. The truck was found off the highway that links Budapest and Vienna.

Janos Lazar sharply criticised the EU for not being able to control the entry of migrants. “The developments of the past few days ... showed that the EU is unable to defend its borders,” Mr Lazar told a news conference.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that everyone had been “shaken” by the news.

“We are of course all shaken by the appalling news,” Ms Merkel told a news conference at a summit on the West Balkans being held in Vienna.

“This reminds us that we must tackle quickly the issue of immigration and in a European spirit - that means in a spirit of solidarity - and to find solutions.”

Tens of thousands of people, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, have put to sea this year in the hope of reaching Europe, often dangerously packed into small vessels that were never designed to cross the Mediterranean.

Those who make it ashore and others travelling by land have increasingly tried to make their way north via the Balkans, causing tension among countries along the route.

Hungary plans to reinforce its southern border with helicopters, mounted police and dogs, and is also considering using the army as record numbers of migrants passed through coils of razor-wire into Europe.

On Tuesday, Austrian police arrested three drivers on suspicion of transporting migrants from Syria and other war-torn areas into the European Union. One of them had driven 34 people packed into the back of a white van across the Austrian border.

That group is understood to include 10 small children. The driver abandoned the group by the side of the motorway near the city of Bruck an der Leitha.

According to police, the migrants said in interviews they “were hardly able to breath” during the trip.

They had asked repeatedly for more air, but the driver had ignored their requests, police added, and had driven without stopping from Serbia to Austria.

New York Times/Reuters/Guardian