"Dead refugees in parked truck — Only profit matters to smugglers" reads the front page of Austrian daily Salzburger Nachrichten"s Friday edition, following the discovery of 71 migrants found suffocated to death in a truck along a main highway in the country's eastern Burgenland province.
Chief of police Hans Peter Doskozil revealed at a news conference Friday that the victims included 59 men, 8 women and four children, who had probably been dead for one-and-a-half to two days after suffocating in the vehicle. They were most likely Syrian migrants fleeing their war-torn country, as suggested by travel documents found inside the truck.
The bodies were found by Austrian police in an abandoned refrigerated food truck on the main highway between Vienna and Budapest, Hungary. Three people (the owner of the truck and two drivers) have been arrested in Hungary in connection with the tragedy.
ABOUT THE SOURCE: The Salzburger Nachrichten is a German language newspaper published in Salzburg. It was founded in 1945.