Austrian authorities have arrested five suspected people smugglers as part of an operation to check vehicles entering along the country’s eastern borders.
According to BBC, over 200 migrants were recovered from vehicles overnight, Austria’s top policeman Konrad Kogler said.
The checks on larger vehicles with space to hide people were introduced on Sunday evening on the orders of Austria’s interior minister. The change follows the discovery of 71 dead migrants in a truck on Thursday.
“We are seeing that the smuggler gangs are acting in ever more brutal and ruthless ways and we must counter them with stronger and harder measures,” said Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner. As well as the bodies in the lorry found near Austria’s border with Hungary, hundreds more people drowned in the Mediterranean last week while trying to reach Europe from Libya.
