EUROPE-MIGRANTS/AUSTRIA-BODIES-LATEST Remaining migrant bodies await transfer to Vienna

Record ID: 142213

  • Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/AUSTRIA-BODIES-LATEST Remaining migrant bodies await transfer to Vienna
  • Date: 28th August 2015
  • Summary: NICKELSDORF, AUSTRIA (AUGUST 28, 2015) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF CUSTOMS BUILDING IN NICKELSDORF REFRIGERATED TRUCK WHERE MIGRANTS BODIES WERE FOUND WITH SHEETS HUNG UP AROUND IT TWO MEN WALKING PAST REFRIGERATED TRUCK REFRIGERATED TRUCK WITH SHEETS HUNG UP AROUND IT VARIOUS OF MEN ORGANISING FENCING GREEN TRUCK ARRIVING AT CUSTOMS BUILDING
  • Embargoed: 12th September 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Austria
  • Country: Austria
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA2T9VPOB1T341EOLXA2OCNNIPO
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The remaining migrant bodies found in a lorry in Austria, awaited transportation to Vienna on Friday (August 28) where forensic pathologists will seek to establish how they died.
    The death toll which Austrian police put at 71 included four children.
    The refrigerated truck was found by an Austrian motorway patrol near the Hungarian border on Thursday (August 27), with fluids from the decomposing bodies seeping from its back door.
    The vehicle had come to Austria from Hungary and is believed to have been parked on the highway for at least 24 hours before it was discovered.
    Security on Friday was tight at a customs facility in the town of Nickelsdorf where forensic investigators had worked through Thursday night to remove the bodies from the truck.
    Of the 71 dead, 59 were men, 8 were women, and four were children, including a girl estimated at 1-2 years old and three boys of roughly 8-10 years.
    Austrian police on Friday said one Syrian travel document had been found among the victims but that it was too early to say from which countries the entire group had come.
    They also said three Bulgarians and an Afghan national have been arrested in Hungary in connection with the tragedy.
    Thousands of people from countries like Afghanistan or Syria have fled through the Balkans to Austria, pushing the number of asylum requests to 28,300 in the first six months of this year - more than the total for all of 2014.
    Austria's Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said the best way to handle the refugee crisis was to create legal pathways into Europe, rather than stricter border controls.
    The 28 member states of the European Union have not yet agreed on introducing binding quotas for the distribution of refugees. Leaders of the EU declared this week that it has "failed" in the face of human agony on its frontiers.
    Meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday the number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe has passed 300,000 this year, up from 219,000 in the whole of 2014.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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