Migrant crisis: Austria holds suspected people smugglers

Austrian authorities have arrested five suspected people smugglers as part of an operation to check vehicles entering along the country's eastern borders.
Over 200 migrants were recovered from vehicles overnight, Austria's top policeman Konrad Kogler said.

The change follows the discovery of 71 dead migrants in a truck on Thursday.
Meanwhile France's prime minister has warned that Europe's migrant crisis will be a long and difficult challenge and called for co-operation.

Austria introduced the extra checks on vehicles entering from Hungary on Sunday evening, concentrating on larger vehicles with space to hide people.

"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.

Austria was shocked by the gruesome deaths of the migrants found in an abandoned lorry near the Hungarian border.

The Bavarian government has introduced extra police checks on vehicles on the motorways near the border with Austria with the aim of bringing migrants into state care safely.

Smugglers have been dumping their passengers at the side of the motorway once over the German border, and groups of migrants trudging along as dawn breaks have become a regular sight in the Passau region.

As well as the bodies in the lorry in Austria, hundreds more people drowned in the Mediterranean last week while trying to reach Europe from Libya.

A record number of 107,500 migrants reached the EU's borders in July.

Long traffic jams built up on Hungary's major roads leading to the Austrian border, because of the extra Austrian police checks.

Queues of 30km (18 miles) were reported on the main M1 road from Budapest, as security officials searched vehicles over the border in Nickelsdorf. There were also jams further along the border at Klingenbach and Deutschkreutz.

Five people have been detained in connection with the deaths of 71 people, most of them thought to be Syrians, in a lorry found last week on the A4 at Parndorf.

BBC