EUROPE-MIGRANTS/AUSTRIA BODIES ARRIVE First migrant truck bodies arrive in Vienna for further examination

Record ID: 142246

  • Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/AUSTRIA BODIES ARRIVE First migrant truck bodies arrive in Vienna for further examination
  • Date: 28th August 2015
  • Summary: VIENNA, AUSTRIA (AUGUST 28, 2015) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF DEPARTMENT OF FORENSIC MEDICINE AT VIENNA MEDICAL UNIVERSITY SIGN FOR UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT VARIOUS OF POLICE OFFICIALS ARRIVING WITH EQUIPMENT VAN CARRYING BODIES ARRIVING WITH POLICE ESCORT SIGN FOR FORENSIC MEDICINE DEPARTMENT VARIOUS OF COFFINS INSIDE VAN SIGN VARIOUS OF BODIES BEING TAKEN OUT OF VAN AND TAKEN INTO BUILDING
  • Embargoed: 12th September 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Austria
  • Country: Austria
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAAHXGCIKXJ8R8U0Q3O9623O38X
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The first bodies of 71 migrants found dead in a lorry in Austria arrived on Friday (August 28) in Vienna where forensic pathologists will seek to establish how they died.
    They were brought to Vienna Medical University's Department for Forensic Science by police escort, where the ten coffins were loaded out, one-by-one, onto trolleys and taken inside by officials.
    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.
    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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