Earlier in the day, a refrigerated vehicle with the bodies of 50 refugees was discovered about 28 miles southeast of the Austrian capital of Vienna and about 16 miles from the Hungarian and Slovak borders. Preliminary indications suggest that the victims suffocated after being trapped inside the vehicle.
"According to the latest investigation, the 7.5-ton refrigerator left Budapest on Wednesday morning. On Thursday night the vehicle crossed the Austrian border. Many things indicate that [the migrants] were already dead when the truck crossed the border," Hans Peter Doskozil, the head of a local Austrian police department, said, as quoted by the Die Presse newspaper.
Law enforcement authorities have not yet confirmed the exact number of victims and whether they were refugees.
According to the European Union's external border protection agency Frontex, the total number of refugees detected at the bloc's borders between January and July 2015 stands at over 340,000, which is three times higher than during the same period in 2014.
