Forensic experts investigate a truck in Parndorf, Austria, where the bodies of up to 50 refugees was found Aug. 27, 2015.
The bodies of at least 20 refugees — and as many as 50 — were found Thursday in a tractor-trailer abandoned on the side of the road in eastern Austria near the Hungarian border, according to multiple media reports.
The nationalities of the victims were not immediately clear, but Europe has been inundated by a recent flood of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, particularly war-torn Syria.
Hans Peter Doskozil, chief of Burgenland police, said it is unclear whether the refugees suffocated in transport and suggested they might have been dead for several days, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse reported. He said the truck had been there at least since Wednesday, but that police only investigated its contents Thursday.
Calling the incident a "terrible crime," Doskozil said the number of victims could be as high as 50.
Police spokesman Helmut Marban said police stopped shortly before noon Thursday thinking that the parked truck had some mechanical trouble, the Associated Press reports. Then they “saw blood dripping” from the vehicle and “noticed the smell of dead bodies,” he said.
The truck was apparently abandoned Wednesday and its back door was left open, Doskozil said. It had Hungarian license plates but the writing on its side and back was in Slovak. The state of the bodies suggested the migrants could have been dead for several days.
Police said the investigation could last for days. They declined to give further information on the victims’ possible identities, whether children were among them, how the migrants may have died or other details.
The truck once belonged to the Slovak chicken meat company Hyza, part of the Agrofert Holding, which is owned by the Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis.
Agrofert Holding said in a statement that it had sold the truck in 2014, AP reported. The new owners did not remove the truck’s logos as required and Hyza has nothing to do with the truck now, the company added.
On one side of the truck was the slogan “Honest chicken” while writing on the back read “I taste so well because they feed me so well.”
“Human smugglers are criminals,” Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said in a statement. “Those who still think that they are gentle helpers of refugees are beyond saving.”
She said the disaster was a "signal to Europe to act as quickly as possible."
The latest news came as a summit of European and Western Balkan countries on migration issues was underway in Vienna to address the refugee crisis and tackle the problem of human trafficking gangs. Germany has urged all European states to share the burden.
A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU's borders last month and on Wednesday police counted more than 3,000 crossing into Serbia, the BBC reported.
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