VIENNA — Europe reeled from more shocks in its escalating migration crisis Friday, with reports of 150 drownings in the Mediterranean and news that far more corpses had been found crammed in an abandoned refrigeration truck in Austria than first thought. Damage to the vehicle’s side raised the possibility that victims had struggled to escape.
Authorities in Austria and Hungary said at least four people had been arrested in connection with the truck as they disclosed that the remains of 71 people had been found inside, including four children, and that at least some had come from Syria. On Thursday officials had estimated as many as 50 people had been packed in the vehicle, before they discovered additional bodies.
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The scope of the migrant and refugee crisis, the biggest wave to hit Europe since World War II, was amplified Friday by a report from the UN refugee agency estimating a 40 percent jump this year in the number of people fleeing to the Continent by boat compared with all of 2014. Most are escaping war and strife in the Middle East and Africa.
The deadly perils of crossing the Mediterranean, already well known, were reinforced by news from Libyan and international relief officials that 150 people had drowned off western Libya after their boats sank Thursday.
The exact toll was unclear, but it had the potential to be among the highest this summer for the legions of desperate families trying to reach European shores.
Jamal Naji Zubia, the director of the foreign media office for the Tripoli-based government of Libya, said that drownings occurred near the port city of Zuwarah, in the far west of the country near Tunisia. Zuwarah is frequently used as a departure point for migrants and refugees trying to make the Mediterranean crossing, often in packed fishing boats or rubber dinghies.
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Still, much of the focus in Europe on Friday was on the relatively new danger of death from smuggling overland, crystallized by the mystery of the people found in the abandoned truck in Austria.
Authorities there reported that three boys ages 7 to 10 and a toddler girl were among the 71 people whose bodies were decomposing in the truck, which had no ventilation. It was abandoned east of Vienna on Wednesday and discovered 24 hours later.
Officials at Hyza, the Slovakian company that formerly owned the truck, said its cooling system was not functional when they sold it. Austrian authorities said they had determined there was no ventilation on the sides of the truck.
The UN refugee agency report said the number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe had reached 310,000 this year, up from 219,000 in 2014.
Close to 200,000 people have landed in Greece this year and around 110,000 more have reached Italy, Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the refugee agency, said in Geneva.
More than 2,500 people have died at sea this year, not including those believed to be victims in Thursday’s sinking off Libya. In 2014, about 3,500 died or were lost while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
“The way people are being packed onto boats is causing their deaths,” Fleming said.
At the root of many of the deaths are the practices of human traffickers who overload boats, cars, trucks, and vans with those willing and able to pay the high cost to cross the Mediterranean or European borders.
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Austrian authorities believe that is what happened to the victims discovered in the truck, parked in the emergency lane of a highway southeast of Vienna.
Once investigators were able to open the rear hold of the vehicle, said Hans Peter Doskozil, director of police in the eastern Austrian state of Burgenland, they found more corpses than they had expected.
They are now trying to identify the victims and have set up a hotline for anyone seeking information about a missing family member.
Authorities said Friday that four people suspected of involvement in the truck operation had been detained in Hungary. Hungarian police said three of those detained are Bulgarian and the fourth is Afghan.
An initial investigation, conducted jointly by Austrian and Hungarian officials, led to the detention of three of the people, and they are believed to be in the lowest rank of a much wider Bulgarian-Hungarian human-trafficking ring, Doskozil said.
“We believe that one perpetrator, a Bulgarian citizen of Lebanese descent, is the current owner of the vehicle,” he added. “Two other suspects who have been detained include a Bulgarian citizen and an individual in possession of a Hungarian identity card, whose nationality has not yet been determined — both believed to be the drivers of the truck.”
The Austrian Red Cross said it expected as many as 4,000 people to cross the country’s eastern border over the weekend, and authorities said they would increase controls. They emphasized, however, that they would not be able to stop each of the roughly 3,000 trucks that enter the country from the east every day.
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