Migrants found dead in an abandoned truck in Austria

Scores of migrants being smuggled into Austria narrowly escaped death last week by breaking open their truck door with a crowbar just one day after the same gang of traffickers had abandoned a vehicle containing 71 dead refugees, police said on Friday.

Austrian police provided details about the two ill-fated truck journeys from Hungary as Europe grapples with its biggest refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, spawned in large part by conflicts in the Middle East.

Police in the eastern Austrian province of Burgenland said photos of suspected members of the human smuggling ring behind the truck with 71 dead had turned up another case in which 81 people crammed into a truck from Hungary were in lethal danger.

Both trucks were owned by the same man, a Bulgarian citizen, police said, who has been arrested along with five other suspects.

In the case involving the 71 dead migrants, police said they had suffocated in a sealed truck whose refrigeration unit was not working, probably dying quickly as they only had enough oxygen for an hour to an hour and a half.

Among the 71 dead were eight women, two children and a family that included a baby girl and young boy. They were discovered on a highway from the Hungarian border to Vienna after fluids from the decomposing bodies were seen seeping from the truck.

The truck's doors had been bolted shut and secured with wire, making it impossible for the refugees to escape.

Austria issued six European arrest warrants in connection with the case, prosecutors said, leading to the detention of five suspects in Hungary and one in Bulgaria. Five of those detained are Bulgarians and one is an Afghan citizen. (Reuters)


Find more news-related pictures in our photo galleries and follow us on Tumblr.