70 victims of Austrian truck tragedy identified

Austrian authorities have been able to identify 70 of the 71 bodies of migrants found dead in the back of a people smuggler's truck in late August, police from the state of Burgenland said Thursday.

They had been discovered in the back of the truck that was parked by the A4 autobahn near the Hungarian border on Aug. 27, believed to have suffocated a day prior due to a lack of oxygen. The decomposing state of the bodies along with a lack of documents made identification efforts by authorities a drawn-out task.

Police have now managed to identify 29 Iraqis, 21 Afghans, 15 Syrians, and 5 Iranians among the deceased.

They were made up of 59 men, eight women, and four children, including three whole families. A total of 44 persons were said to have been identified by their DNA, and a further 21 by fingerprints.

State police chief in Burgenland Hans Peter Doskozil said most of the bodies have by now been transported back to the home countries of the victims, and 15 buried in Austria.

The case is thus considered to be largely closed, the authorities said, with only some investigations into the criminal groups behind the people smuggling operation remaining. Five of the perpetrators, four Bulgarians and one Afghan national, are currently in prison in neighboring Hungary.

Doskozil said it was a "symbolic case" in the history of the Burgenland police, and that he hoped it would not soon be forgotten in light of the ongoing migrant crisis. Enditem