Austria. Three migrants die in smuggler’s van trying to evade police

Three illegal migrants were killed and several others injured on Saturday in Austria when the van carrying them and trying to escape border police turned around. Several are of Syrian nationality. The accident took place in Burgenland, at a border post with Slovakia, said the Interior Ministry.

Twenty people, including children, were crammed into the back of the van. Two men and a woman were killed, and the driver, of Russian origin, arrested. “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 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. 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.