Growing Migrant Crisis Across Europe; U.N.: More Than 300,000 Migrants Crossed Mediterranean Sea This Year
AMARA WALKER, CNN HOST: Hello and welcome everyone to the INTERNATIONAL DESK, I'm Amara Walker at the CNN Center. We begin with the growing migrant crisis in Europe. Hungarian police have arrested four people in connection with 71 bodies found inside an abandoned truck in Austria.</s>WALKER: Austrian police say they were probably refugees from war torn Syria. The truck was found Thursday on a highway that links Budapest in Hungary to the Austrian capital. Now Austrian authorities say a Bulgarian/Hungarian people smuggling ring is suspected. Let's get the very latest now, our Phil Black standing by live in London with more on the bodies recovered in Austria.</s>WALKER: Phil, this is just horrific to say the least and now we're talking about 71 bodies including children.</s>PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right Amara. It's clear the Austrian officials themselves are quite disturbed by the nature of this discovery and by the number of people that they found ultimately in the back of that truck.</s>BLACK: Initially yesterday when they first opened it up saw the horrific sight, they thought 50. Now they know, they've moved the truck, counted the bodies 71 in all. 59 men, 8 women and four children as well. Some of them very young children. So it's clear that if you look at the size of the truck try to imagine that number of people it would have been a crush, it would have been a frightening experience. It would have been very difficult, very uncomfortable, and ultimately for those people fatal. And it's perhaps no surprise to hear that the Austrian authorities believed these people died because they simply ran out of air. Their number one theory at the moment is that they suffocated. They don't know when exactly, the time of death they say is crucial to the investigation going forward but they believe that that truck was sitting by that roadside for a full 24 hours with those bodies inside before someone asked questions, opened the door and actually made that discovery.</s>BLACK: They believe that it left Hungary on Wednesday morning and so that is where they have tracked they think the owner of the vehicle, people who may have driven it at various times. And according to the Hungarian police they now have four people in custody there Amara.</s>WALKER: Yes and Phil, what more do we know about arrests that have been made and do they believe that the people that have been arrested are part of a larger smuggler ring?</s>BLACK: They thing they have someone who owns the truck in name at least, people who may have driven it at one time. But in the words of the Austrian authorities they believe that these are people who are very low ranking members of a much bigger, wider, people smuggling operation that has links to both Hungary and Bulgaria as well. A much bigger operation. And they say bigger in the sense that more ambitious in terms of this attempt to move so many people in this way. They say this is unusual. They're aware of these movements, they're aware of these people smuggling operations.</s>BLACK: But they say they usually do them in smaller vehicles with smaller number of people, not on this scale Amara.</s>WALKER: All right, Phil Black, many thanks to you for that live report there in London.</s>WALKER: I want to turn to Arwa Damon who is in Hungary right now. And Arwa you have been tracking this really difficult and arduous journey that these refugees have been taking hoping to get to the heart of the EU. What are they finding when they get to the border with Hungary?</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we can show you that pretty much right now. This is a holding area that has been set up just on the other side of the border with Serbia inside Hungary. And this is where the refugees are held. The problem is there is no shelter here and up until a short while ago, until a small non-profit appeared called Solidarity for Migrants,</s>WALKER: All right it looks like Arwa Damon's signal is breaking up there but we did get the just of the story that it's been really tough for the migrants who've been arriving there at the Hungary who are trying to get to the heart of Europe. We'll pick that up when we can. We're going to turn to new numbers now from the United Nations which paint an astounding picture of the scope of this crisis.</s>WALKER: The UN says more than 300,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean just this year. Most of them landing in Italy or Greece, and that has already surpassed a number of people who made that crossing in all of last year. In 2014 the total was 219,000 and all of them are taking a major very risk - a major risk. Since January more than 2,500 people have lost their lives or been reported missing trying to cross the Mediterranean to get to Europe. And adding to those grim statistics at least 84 people drowned when two migrant vessels sank off the Libyan coast. One went down on Wednesday, the other on Thursday. About 200 people have been rescued, many people still missing. Our Ben Wedeman monitoring that part of the crisis from Rome.</s>WALKER: Ben, yet another tragedy in the Mediterranean, what can you tell us about this one?</s>BEN WEDEMAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All I can tell you at this moment is that these numbers are very approximate. 84 is what we were told by a spokesman from the Libyan Red Crescent but the number may well be as high as 200.</s>WEDEMAN: Now these two boats went off the town of Zuwara in Western Libya, a town where a lot of these migrants depart from crossing the Mediterranean and in this instance they're usually ending up in Italy. But they didn't get very far. In fact the Italian coast guard, the Italian navy had no information about this incident. At this point, we understand it's only the Libyan Coast guard that is dealing with this disaster and apparently they've run out of body bags for with - for all the people they've pulled out dead from the water. Now they say they've also managed to rescue more than 200 people but as I said these numbers are likely to rise. And of course this comes just two days after on Wednesday a Swedish Coastguard vessel came across a boat in the Mediterranean with several hundred people on board. They entered that boat, they went into the hold of it and they found what appears to be at this point 52 people dead in that hold. Now initially it was reported that they died of suffocation but we're hearing from the Italian News Agency that many of them also appear to have been stabbed and beaten as well.</s>WEDEMAN: So in addition to the sheer danger of drowning at sea some of these human traffickers are clearly so brutal that they don't hesitate to kill the people who have paid them to cross the Mediterranean.</s>WALKER: The brutal encounters you talk about it's also incredible Ben when you say that they run out of body bags. Let's also talk about Europe's response to this. We know Italy and Greece and the likes are extremely overwhelmed by this influx of refugees but when you talk about the response it seems like it's been mostly reactionary. We've seen and heard about the search and rescue operations but when it comes to the route of the crisis, that's what the world has really been failing to deal with.</s>WEDEMAN: Yes, and I think that was the point Arwa was trying to make before we lost communications with her. Is that yes of course the Europeans are doing what they can, perhaps they could be doing quite a lot more. But for instance the Italian navy, the coastguard and other naval forces of the European Union are operating fairly close to the Libyan shores to try to rescue as many people as possible.</s>WEDEMAN: But at the end of the day unless somebody, some country, some world force can for instance resolve the Syrian civil war that's been going on for 4-1/2 years that's left almost 300,000 people dead, it's destroyed an entire country and we're just talking about Syria, not getting onto Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan. Until those problems are resolved people will come to Europe however they can.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are immigrating and of course illegally its known and we sank in the sea. The boat was in bad condition and people died with us. The Libyans saved us, may god bless them. We have been forced into this route, it's called the route of death. It's now called the grave of the Mediterranean Sea.</s>WEDEMAN: And a grave indeed it is and it's ironic that we're in fact even they're calling themselves migrants. Migrants are like birds that migrate from the south to the north in the summer. But these are people who aren't migrating, they are fleeing they're escaping. As I said incredibly awful wars, disruption, a destruction, invasion, oppression, dictatorship and they're not coming to Europe simply for vacation, they're coming to save their lives and the lives of their families.</s>WALKER: That's absolutely right, these are refugees we're talking about who are fleeing persecution and wars like you say. Ben Wedeman with the very latest from Rome. Ben, many thanks to you on that. And this is the INTERNATIONAL DESK.</s>WALKER: Next, new details of a killers meticulously planned attack on two T.V. journalists. Also we are watching Wall Street. Can U.S. stocks extend their two day winning streak? All that and more here at the INTERNATIONAL DESK.