Austria: a van tries to escape the police, three people killed

Europe 1 with AFP 3:37 p.m., August 13, 2022

Three illegal migrants were killed and several others injured on Saturday in Austria when the van carrying them and trying to escape border police overturned, Austrian news agency APA reported.

The accident took place in Burgenland, at a border post with Slovakia, said the Interior Ministry.

20 people crammed into the back of a van

Twenty people, including children, were crammed into the back of the van.

Two men and a woman were killed, and the driver arrested, again according to the APA.

“The tragic death of three people today at the Kittsee/Jarovce border once again shows the brutality and lack of scruples of the smuggling mafias,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said in a statement.

The police were not immediately available.

In May, the Austrian Interior Ministry announced the dismantling of a network that had smuggled tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, mainly Syrians, from Hungary to Austria.

The precedent of 2015

In 2015, 71 bodies, including those of 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.