Three illegal immigrants were killed and several more were injured in Austria on Saturday when the van carrying them and trying to escape border police turned around, the Austrian news agency APA reported.
The accident took place in Burgenland, at a border post with Slovakia, the Interior Ministry said.
Twenty people, including children, were crammed into the back of the truck. Two men and a woman were killed and the driver arrested, according to the APA.
Dismantling a smuggling network
“The tragic death of three people today at the border between Kittsee and Jarovce demonstrates once again the brutality and unscrupulousness of the smuggling mafias,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said in a statement. Police were not immediately available.
In May, the Austrian Ministry of the Interior announced the dismantling of a network that had smuggled tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, mainly Syrians, from Hungary to Austria.
In 2015, 71 bodies, including children, were found in a waterproof truck in which they had suffocated. They had apparently died in transit to Hungary, but were discovered on the Austrian side of the border.
Source: BFM TV
