MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Police initially put the body count between 20 and 50. The victims are believed to be migrants who suffocated in the truck before being abandoned by human traffickers.
Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Alexander Marakovits confirmed the updated estimate on Friday, according to local media reports. Austria’s Krone newspaper cited undisclosed sources as saying the remains were that of adult men and women.
The truck was found the same day as the leaders of Western Balkan nations met in Vienna to discuss the migrant crisis in their region, the most popular land route to Europe.
The European Union's external border protection agency Frontex, over 340,000 migrants were detected at the 28-nation bloc's external borders between January and July 2015. This is three times higher than during the same period in 2014.
