Posted on August 27, 2015

Truck ‘Full of Bodies’ Found in Eastern Austria: Official

Carlo Angerer et al., NBC News, August 27, 2015

An abandoned truck “full of bodies” was found on the side of a highway in eastern Austria on Thursday.

Police said the dead were thought to be refugees.

Gerald Pangl, a police spokesman in the Austrian state of Burgenland, told NBC News that the death toll was unclear.

Hans Peter Doskozil, the head of the Burgenland Police, added: “We cannot say exactly how many there are. We could imagine that maybe 20 people have died, but it could also be 40 or 50 . . . We think that these are refugees.”

The Krone newspaper reported that initial indications were that they suffocated.

According to Pangl, the vehicle’s cab was unlocked and there were no signs of its driver. He added that the truck had Hungarian license plates.

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The 7.5-ton truck was found on a highway near the town of Neusiedl am See, around 30 miles from Vienna and 10 miles from the Hungarian and Slovakian borders. The road forms part of a major artery linking Eastern Europe to France and Germany.

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The war in Syria has contributed to record numbers of migrants attempting to cross into Europe from Africa and the Middle East this year, often taking perilous sea crossings and stowing away in trucks.

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A spokeswoman for the office of Hungarian Prime Minister János Lázár told NBC News that the vehicle had been registered to a Romanian citizen in the Hungarian city of Kecskemét.