Remains of people who are thought to have suffocated discovered in lorry abandoned on hard shoulder of motorway in east of country
The bodies of at least 20 migrants – and possibly as many as 40 or 50 – have been found inside a parked lorry in eastern Austria, police said on Thursday, in a grim indication of the growing human toll of Europe’s worst refugee emergency since 1945.
The badly decomposed remains were discovered on Thursday morning on Austria’s A4 motorway between Neusiedl and Parndorf. The truck had been abandoned on the hard shoulder of the road near Parndorf. It had apparently been there since Wednesday. The refugees, who appeared to have suffocated, died before they entered Austria, police said.
Hans Peter Doskozil, head of police in the district of Burgenland, said there were at least 20 dead but that the death toll could rise to 40 or 50. The state of the bodies made establishing an exact figure difficult. The identities were also not known, he said.
“The deaths already occurred some time ago,” he added. “We can make no concrete assumptions about the origin or cause [of death]. We can assume, however, that they are refugees.”
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/27/migrants-found-dead-inside-lorry-in-austria
