The leaders of Germany and Balkan nations gathered Thursday to discuss how to deal with massive numbers of refugees flooding into their countries amid reports of at least 20 migrants found dead in a truck in Austria.
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“Unfortunately there are many dead people in there,” the spokesperson said.
“We can assume that there may be 20 people have died, it is also 40 to 50”, a police spokesman said.
The truck was parked on the shoulder between the towns of Parndorf and Neusiedl, Kronen Zeitung reported.
Doskozil, the police chief of Burgenland province, said the state of the bodies made it hard to say how many bodies were in the truck but estimated it could be up to 50.
The Guardian writes: “Road employees spotted the lorry and alerted the police”.
Speaking to EVN, Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said: “Today is a dark day and our thoughts are with the victims”. “A manhunt for the driver is now underway”.
“Human traffickers are criminals”.
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The talks in Vienna on Thursday come a day after Merkel vowed zero tolerance for “vile” anti-migrant violence in Germany, and amid growing criticism of the European Union’s failure to agree a joint response. One of them had driven 34 people packed into the back of a white van across the Austrian border.
