World
Truck of Corpses, New Shipwreck Intensify Europe’s Migrant Crisis
Police stands near a truck that stands on the shoulder of the highway A4 near Parndorf south of Vienna, Austria, Thursday, Aug 27, 2015. At least 20 migrants were found dead in the truck parked on the Austrian highway leading from the Hungarian border, police said. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)
(Reuters) – As many as 50 corpses were found in a parked truck in Austria on Thursday, and another migrant boat sank off Libya, deepening a crisis that is overwhelming Europe and throwing up new tragedies by the day.
The abandoned refrigerated truck was found by an Austrian motorway patrol near the Hungarian border, with fluids from the decomposing bodies seeping from its back door.
“One can maybe assume that the deaths occurred one-and-a-half to two days ago,” Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief in the province of Burgenland, told a news conference, adding that “many things” indicated the migrants were already dead when the truck crossed the border.
Police said it could take until Friday to determine the exact number of victims, which they thought were more than 20 and could be as many as 50. They suspected those responsible were already out of the country.
