Bangladeshis among 26 rescued from Austria minivan

Bangladeshi migrants are among the 26 people rescued from a mini covered-van (lorry) stopped by Austrian police in Braunau district on Friday. The police also arrested the driver of the mini van – a Romanian national – after a chase. Police officials said the mini lorry, believed to contain migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, was stopped in the small town of St Peter-am-Hart close to the German border. The rescued people were taken to a hospital. Three children are recovering in hospital after being rescued from the covered-van along with the 26 migrants. Police said the severely dehydrated children would not have lasted much longer in the cramped vehicle. A police spokesman said that the children were crammed in the back of the minivan along with the other migrants, said to be from Syria, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. He said the children – aged about five or six – were critically ill and almost unconscious. Officials said on Saturday that their lives were no longer in danger but they are still in hospital. Police said they had tried to stop the vehicle and gave chase when it drove off at speed. The migrants said they were hoping to reach Germany. The latest discovery of covered-van carrying illegal migrants happened one day after Austrian police found 71 bodies in a lorry left on a roadside near the Hungarian border that led to an outcry.
The bodies of 71, believed to be refugees, were discovered in an abandoned lorry near the Hungarian border on Thursday. The victims included 59 men, eight women and four children who are thought to have been dead for about two days. Officials said the group appeared to be refugees from Syria and probably died after suffocating in the covered-van.
The decomposing bodies were discovered on Thursday morning in the dumped lorry on the A4 motorway towards Vienna. The vehicle was towed to a customs building with refrigeration facilities where forensic teams worked through the night to examine the bodies. The group are thought to have been dead when the vehicle crossed into Austria from Hungary. Among the victims was a girl aged between one and two years old. The local police chief said a travel document found on the vehicle suggested that the group were Syrian migrants. "Our preliminary assumption is of course that they were refugees, possibly a group of Syrian refugees," Hans Peter Doskozil, Burgenland province police chief, told reporters. The vehicle had the branding of a Slovakian poultry company, Hyza, on it but the firm said it no longer owned the vehicle. Preliminary investigation found that there was no ventilation possible through the sides of the lorry, Doskozil added, according to APA.
- biplab