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Death toll rises to 71 refugees in Austrian truck tragedy

A truck that was discovered abandoned on an Austrian motorway on Thursday contained 71 bodies including children, police sources said Friday. At least three people have been arrested in connection with the deaths.

Dieter Nagl, AFP | A refrigerated truck is towed along a highway near Neusiedl am See, Austria, on August 27. The bodies of more than 70 migrants were found in the truck on the A4 highway in Austria, police said.
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The refugees likely suffocated in the refrigerated truck abandoned on Austria's main highway, said Hans Peter Doskozil, chief of police in the eastern Burgenland province.

A Syrian travel document was found in the truck along with the victims but Doskozil said more time was needed to determine whether people of other nationalities were among the victims.

The truck, which had arrived in Austria from Hungary, was found by an Austrian motorway patrol near the border just before lunchtime on Thursday, with fluids from the decomposing bodies seeping from its back door.

“Work continued throughout the night, but I expect all the bodies have been removed now,” said Helmut Marban, a police spokesman for the Burgenland province. “Forensic investigators are still at the lorry and trying to establish all the facts.”

The truck is at a customs building in the village of Nickelsdorf, which has refrigeration facilities and where forensic specialists clad in white protective suits and yellow rubber boots could be seen wheeling body bags away.

'TOUGHER PENALTIES FOR SMUGGLERS'

Investigations have been launched in both Austria and Hungary following the gruesome discovery, with police in the two countries differing over the number of arrests made.

Doskozil said three people had been arrested in Hungary, including a man believed to be the truck’s owner and who is of Bulgarian-Lebanese origin.

He said the three suspects were likely "low-ranking members... of a Bulgarian-Hungarian human-trafficking gang", and not the ring leaders.

Hungarian police said they arrested four people – three Bulgarians and an Afghan – and raided several addresses and confiscated items.

A spokesman for Hungary's chief prosecutor told AFP a court would decide later Friday whether they would be detained beyond an initial 72-hour period.

The truck had Hungarian number plates, a Hungarian official said.

Janos Lazar, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, said a Romanian citizen had registered the number plate in the eastern Hungarian town of Kecskemet.

Crisis summit

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.

Hungary is building a barbed-wire fence along its border with Serbia to stem the flow.

The Balkan route is considered safer than the Mediterranean crossing to Italy, which the International Organization for Migration says has cost more than 2,373 people lives so far this year.

European leaders have struggled to come up with a joint response to the crisis, with some members refusing to accept binding quotas for the distribution of refugees.

“The refugees who died today wanted to save their own lives by fleeing, but instead lost their lives at the hands of traffickers,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann told a migrant crisis summit with Balkan countries in Vienna:

Why Greece is seen as a safer route than Italy

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she hoped the tragedy would push member states to “take decisions and responsibility”.

European Commissioner Johannes Hahn reiterated that Brussels would propose a fresh look at the situation in the next few weeks with a view to sharing responsibility between EU countries.

“We will have another go at quotas. I hope that in the light of the most recent developments now there is a readiness among all the 28 (member states) to agree on this,” he said.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic put the onus on the EU to find a better way to handle the influx of refugees instead of relying on transit countries like Serbia to act.

“So you have a problem but you are asking us, Serbia, to come up with the action plan for migrants. You should come up with an action plan first,” he said.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

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