Death truck in Austria: 71 migrants desperately tried to reach air

At least 71 migrants suffocated in a truck found on a highway in the Austrian province of Burgenland, reports Kronen Zeitung, citing sources from the Austrian police. The bodies of men and women were found in the truck, but there were no children among the victims, reports the Patria news agency.

Yesterday, police said that between 20 and 50 migrants had suffocated in the truck, but they could not confirm the exact number because some bodies had already begun to decompose. 

Confirmation that there were more than 70 dead bodies in the truck has since arrived from the relevant institutions, reports the BBC. Austrian police assume that the migrants died at least a day and a half or two days before they were found, and the decomposition of the bodies was accelerated by the extreme heat. It is assumed that the migrants were already dead when they crossed the Austrian border. 

Traces found on the truck indicate that the migrants tried to escape from the death truck. On one side, a crack several meters long is visible. The police have not yet offered an official explanation for this damage to the truck, but it is assumed that the migrants desperately tried to reach air. Unfortunately, they did not succeed.

According to Kronen Zeitung, the police have also gathered initial information about the human traffickers responsible for the deaths of the migrants. The driver allegedly left the truck on the A4 highway yesterday morning and fled to Hungary. It is assumed that he is a Romanian citizen, although the truck had Hungarian license plates and bore the logo of a Slovak company.

The police moved the truck with the dead migrants to a former veterinary station near the border, where the bodies were removed and transferred to pathology in Vienna.

-My colleagues worked all night and all the bodies were removed from the truck, confirmed police spokesman Helmut Marban, reports Index.