Two Hungarian men were placed in custody Sunday after trying to smuggle 32 Afghan and Pakistani refugees into Austria, the sixth such case of trafficking in just two weeks, local police said. The two men, aged 37 and 45, were arrested early Saturday after crossing the border from Hungary with the 32 refugees hidden in the back of a van behind a pile of cardboard boxes.
The migrants, aged 12 to 40, had entered Hungary by foot from Serbia then boarded the van to Austria. They have now demanded asylum and have been taken to a centre for asylum seekers, according to the police.
This was the sixth case of smuggling to be uncovered by Austrian police in two weeks. Since August 23, officers have picked up over 200 refugees, most of them from Pakistan and Afghanistan but some also from Bangladesh, Iraq and Somalia.