Austria: Death toll of migrants in truck reaches 71, including 4 children, 8 women

Austrian police said the refrigerated truck was found by an Austrian motorway patrol near the Hungarian border just before lunchtime on Thursday, with fluids from the decomposing bodies seeping from its back door

When they opened it, there was a powerful stench of human decay and the bodies lay piled on top of each other, crammed into a small rectangular space in a sea of tangled limbs.

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Austrian police had originally put the toll at up to 50 and are due to announce the exact number within hours. The vehicle had come to Austria from Hungary. There were “at least 20, but there could be as many as 40 or 50”, police spokesman Hans Peter Doskozil had said.

The van had the markings of a Slovakian poultry company and Hungarian number plates.

“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.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in Austria for a summit with Balkan leaders on the crisis, said she was “shaken” by the “horrible” news.

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“This is a warning to us to tackle this migrants issue quickly and in a European spirit, which means in a spirit of solidarity, and to find solutions,” Merkel said.

“Today is a dark day… This tragedy affects us all deeply,” Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told a press conference.

Mikl-Leitner vowed to crack down on the people who pocket exorbitant sums to arrange migrants’ passage to Europe, and then often leave them stranded en route.

“Human traffickers are criminals,” she said.

Hungary said it would join the investigation into the tragedy.

Thursday’s grim discovery in Austria brought home how dangerous the land journey for migrants through eastern and southeastern Europe is, after many have already survived a perilous sea crossing.

So far this year, over 2,300 men, women and children have drowned in the Mediterranean after rickety boats operated by people-smugglers capsized.

Libya’s coastguard said Thursday evening at least 30 more people had died in the shipwreck of a boat carrying around 200 migrants bound for Europe.