Austrian authorities say three people have been arrested in Hungary after the bodies of 71 refugees were found in a truck abandoned on a motorway.
Police had originally put the death toll at between 20 and 50 after the truck was found on Thursday, but Austrian officials revised the figure upwards on FridaySpeaking at a press conference in Eisenstadt, Austrian police official Hans Peter Doskozil said the dead comprised 59 men, 8 women and four children, including a young infant.
He said it was likely that those in the truck suffocated.
Of the three arrested, one is a Bulgarian who is believed to have owned the vehicle. The others, a Bulgarian and another with Hungarian documents, are “pretty certain to be those who drove the vehicle,” Doskozil said.
Officials said they hoped the three would lead them to others responsible for trafficking the dead across Europe.
The truck, found on Thursday, had travelled to Austria from Hungary. The partly decomposed bodies were piled on top of each other in a cargo container in the vehicle, parked off the highway in Burgenland state.
In a separate incident, in Hungary, police said 10 Syrian refugees were injured on Friday when a van driven by a Romanian suspected of human trafficking overturned en route for Budapest.
The shocking discovery of the 71 bodies cast a shadow over talks in Vienna, where Europe’s leaders had gathered on Thursday to discuss the mounting refugee crisis on the continent.
Police had originally put the death toll at between 20 and 50 after the truck was found on Thursday, but Austrian officials revised the figure upwards on FridaySpeaking at a press conference in Eisenstadt, Austrian police official Hans Peter Doskozil said the dead comprised 59 men, 8 women and four children, including a young infant.
He said it was likely that those in the truck suffocated.
Of the three arrested, one is a Bulgarian who is believed to have owned the vehicle. The others, a Bulgarian and another with Hungarian documents, are “pretty certain to be those who drove the vehicle,” Doskozil said.
Officials said they hoped the three would lead them to others responsible for trafficking the dead across Europe.
The truck, found on Thursday, had travelled to Austria from Hungary. The partly decomposed bodies were piled on top of each other in a cargo container in the vehicle, parked off the highway in Burgenland state.
In a separate incident, in Hungary, police said 10 Syrian refugees were injured on Friday when a van driven by a Romanian suspected of human trafficking overturned en route for Budapest.
The shocking discovery of the 71 bodies cast a shadow over talks in Vienna, where Europe’s leaders had gathered on Thursday to discuss the mounting refugee crisis on the continent.
