Three people were arrested in Hungary in connection with the truck
deaths and Austrian police said they suspected a Bulgarian-Hungarian
trafficking ring was responsible.
The victims - 59 men, 8 women and four children, including a girl
estimated at 1-2 years old - were probably from Syria, police said.
At least 180 were either dead or missing in the Libyan disaster.
Both tragedies were a result of a renewed surge in migrants seeking
refuge from war and poverty that has confronted Europe with its
worst refugee crisis since World War Two.
The U.N. refugee agency said the number of refugees and migrants
crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe had passed 300,000 this
year, up from 219,000 in the whole of 2014.
More than 2,500 have died making the crossing this year, the UNHCR
said, compared with 3,500 who died or went missing in the
Mediterranean in 2014.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Aug/28/images/ads/current/goodman_sda_daily_021914.png) A security official in the western Libyan town of Zuwara, from where
the doomed migrant boat had set off, said there had been around 400
people on board. Many appeared to have been trapped in the hold when
it capsized on Thursday.
"About 100 people are still missing," said Ibrahim al-Attoushi, a
Red Crescent official, and about 198 had been rescued.
The migrants were from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Morocco
and Bangladesh, the security official said.
The Italian coast guard said 1,430 people had been rescued in
various operations off Libya on Thursday, and a merchant ship sent
to the aid of a small boat carrying 125 people recovered two bodies.
The Libyan coast guard has limited capabilities, relying on small
inflatables, tug boats and fishing vessels.
Zuwara, near the Tunisian border, is a major launchpad for smugglers
shipping migrants to Italy.
Libya is a major transit route for migrants hoping to make it to
Europe. Smuggling networks exploit the country's lawlessness and
chaos to bring Syrians into Libya via Egypt while Africans arrive
through Niger, Sudan and Chad.
SWEEPING NORTH
In Europe, refugees and migrants have swept north through the
Balkans in recent days, with thousands of Syrians, Afghans and
Pakistanis crossing from Serbia into EU-member Hungary, where
authorities said more than 140,000 had been caught entering the
country so far this year.
Almost all hope to reach the more affluent countries of northern and
western Europe such as Germany and Sweden.
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![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Aug/28/images/ads/current/st_claras_lda_082114.png)
Hungary, which is part of Europe’s Schengen passport-free travel
zone, is building a high fence along its border with Serbia to
confront what it says is a threat to European security, prosperity
and identity.
Austrian police had originally put the death toll in the truck found
abandoned near the Hungarian border on Thursday at about 50, but
later raised the figure to 71.
The refrigerated vehicle was found by an Austrian motorway patrol
with fluids from the decomposing bodies seeping from its back door.
It had been abandoned on the side of the highway that leads from
Hungary to Vienna.
The truck is at a customs building in the village of Nickelsdorf,
which has refrigeration facilities and where forensic specialists in
white protective suits and yellow rubber boots could be seen
wheeling body bags away.
In Hungary, police said 10 Syrian migrants were injured on Friday
when a van driven by a Romanian suspected of human trafficking
overturned en route for Budapest.
At a Geneva briefing, the UNHCR said that in one incident on
Thursday, 51 people suffocated in the hold of a boat and survivors
said they had been beaten to force them into the hold and then had
to pay money to smugglers just to come out to breathe.
One of the survivors, an Iraqi orthopaedic surgeon, said he had paid
3,000 euros ($3,400) to come up on to the top deck with his wife and
two-year-old son.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Aug/28/images/ads/current/morton_sda_daily_fair_2015.png)
Last week, 49 people died in another boat's hold after inhaling
poisonous fumes, and on Wednesday 21 people are thought to have died
after a dinghy with 145 on board got into difficulty, UNHCR
spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.
(Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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