Three Syrian children and their families, who were rescued from a minivan containing 26 migrants in Austria, have disappeared from the hospital where they were being treated, police say.
The children were taken to hospital in the town of Braunau am Inn on August 28 suffering from severe dehydration.
Their discovery came a day after 71 bodies, thought to be migrants, were found on a dumped truck in Austria.
Several European countries have called for urgent talks on the migrant crisis.
Austrian police said they stopped the minivan in Braunau, which sits on Austria’s border with Germany, on August 28 and arrested its Romanian driver.
The children – two girls and a boy aged between one and five years old – were said to have been crammed in the back along with other migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Police said they were critically ill and almost unconscious when they were found.
The children and their families disappeared from the hospital at some point on August 29.
Authorities believe they may have tried to cross the border into Germany, rather than face deportation back to Hungary.
Separately on August 30, Hungarian police said they had arrested a fifth man over the deaths of the 71 people who were found in the abandoned truck in Austria on August 27.
The man is the fourth Bulgarian to be held over the find near the Hungarian border. The other man is Afghan. Authorities believe the men are low-level members of a human trafficking gang.
Officials said the 59 men, eight women and four children – thought to be mainly Syrians – had probably died of suffocation two days earlier.
It is the latest in a series of tragic events as more and more migrants attempt to reach Europe by land or by sea. A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU’s borders last month.
Four people have been arrested by Hungarian police over the discovery of the bodies of 71 migrants, thought to be Syrian, in an abandoned truck in Austria.
Three of those arrested are Bulgarian and one is Afghan.
The bodies of 59 men, 8 women and four children were discovered on August 27 in an abandoned truck on an Austrian highway near the Hungarian border.
They are thought to have been dead for about two days.
Officials said the victims probably died after suffocating in the vehicle.
The truck was towed to a customs building with refrigeration facilities where forensic teams worked through the night to examine the bodies.
The migrants are thought to have been dead when the vehicle crossed into Austria from Hungary. Among the victims was a girl aged between one and two years old.
The local Austrian police chief said a travel document found on the vehicle suggested that the group were Syrian migrants.
“Our preliminary assumption is of course that they were refugees, possibly a group of Syrian refugees,” Hans Peter Doskozil, Burgenland province police chief, told reporters.
The truck had the branding of a Slovakian poultry company, Hyza, on it but the firm said it no longer owned the vehicle.
Hans Peter Doskozil said it was unusual for people smugglers to use a refrigerated vehicle.
“In our preliminary investigation we found that there was no ventilation possible through the sides of the truck,” he said, adding that the victims had probably suffocated.
Hungarian police said in a statement that they had “conducted house searches… and questioned almost 20 people as witnesses”.
Hans Peter Doskozil said one of the Bulgarians arrested is assumed to be the truck’s owner, while it is “highly likely” the other two are “the ones who drove the vehicle”.
He said there was “an indication we are talking about a Bulgarian-Hungarian human trafficking operation”.
“If you look at the organization of people traffickers, these are the lowest two levels of a criminal organization,” Hans Peter Doskozil added.
No details have been given about the Afghan detainee.
The truck, which has Hungarian number plates, is understood to have left Budapest on Wednesday morning, August 26.
It is believed to have been parked in the lay-by between Neusiedl and Parndorf for at least 24 hours before police discovered the bodies.
Tens of thousands of migrants from conflict-hit states in the Middle East and Africa have been trying to make their way to Europe in recent months.
A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU’s borders last month.
Some of them pay large sums of money to people smugglers to get them through borders illegally.
The bodies of more than 70 people, thought to be migrants, have been found in an abandoned truck found on an Austrian highway on August 27, Austrian authorities say.
Authorities originally estimated that between 20 to 50 people died in the vehicle, found near the Hungarian border.
Police sent to investigate the dumped truck on the A4 road towards Vienna discovered the decomposing bodies.
The local police chief said it appeared those in the truck had been dead for one-and-a-half to two days.
The victims were probably already dead when the vehicle crossed into Austria from Hungary, authorities said. It is unclear how they died.
The vehicle was towed to a customs building with refrigeration facilities in Nickelsdorf where forensic teams worked through the night to examine the bodies.
Austrian police are expected to reveal the exact toll at a news conference at 11:00 on August 28.
The police forces in Austria and Hungary are working together to try and find the driver.
A report in Austrian newspaper Krone said on August 28 that seven people had been arrested in Hungary, but this has not been confirmed.
The truck bears the logo of a Slovakian poultry company, Hyza, which said it no longer owned the vehicle – but the buyers had not removed the branding.
The Hungarian prime minister’s chief of staff, Janos Lazar, said on August 28 that the truck was registered to a Romanian citizen in Kecskemet, a city in central Hungary.
Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief in the Burgenland province where the lorry was found, said it was a refrigerated vehicle – not the typical choice for people smugglers, he added.
The truck, which has Hungarian number plates, is understood to have left Budapest on August 26.
More than 20 migrants have been found dead in a truck abandoned on an Austrian highway lay-by near the eastern border with Hungary, local authorities say.
The number of dead could be as high as 50, police say. Their bodies had started to decompose.
The truck has been moved to an undisclosed location for detailed examination.
The shocking find comes as a summit focusing on migration takes place in the Austrian capital, Vienna.
Tens of thousands of migrants from conflict-hit states in the Middle East and Africa have been trying to make their way to Europe.
Austria’s Chancellor Werner Faymann said the tragedy showed once again “how necessary it is to save lives by combating criminals and people traffickers”.
The vehicle – a refrigerated truck with Hungarian license plates – was parked off the A4 highway between Parndorf and Neusiedl am See, according to Burgenland police chief Hans Peter Doskozil.
Officers had found at least 20 bodies inside the truck, but there could be 30, 40 or even 50 inside, he told Austrian TV.
The truck was found late on Thursday morning, August 27, but had been there since at least August 26, Peter Doskozil said.
The victims had been dead for some time.
At 15:30 local time the truck was towed away, and was due to be taken to a hall in the local area for further examination, Austrian media report.
Only there would the truck be opened and the recovery of the bodies begin, the authorities said.
The truck bears the logo of a Slovakian poultry company, Hyza, which said in a statement that the vehicle no longer belonged to the firm – but the new owners had not removed the branding.
Hungarian police are working with Austrian police on the investigation, a spokesman for the Hungarian prime minister said.
Hungary had been informed that the driver was Romanian, the spokesman said.
In Vienna, Serbia and Macedonia have told the summit on migration that EU must come up with an action plan to respond to the influx of migrants into Europe.
Austria has complained that the EU has failed to address the problem of people entering via the Western Balkans.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today’s find “reminds us to tackle the issue of migration with European spirit and find solutions”.
A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU’s borders last month and on August 26 police counted more than 3,000 crossing into Serbia.
Meanwhile migrants are continuing to die as they try to reach Europe via the central Mediterranean route. The bodies of at least 51 people were found on August 26 in the hold of a stricken ship off the coast of Libya.
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