Migrant children in critical condition

Three young children were found in grave condition crammed inside a van with 23 other refugees in Austria on Saturday. The two girls and one boy, aged 5 and 6, were suffering from dehydration and close to death when they were discovered by police after a high-speed chase with a minivan close to the German border.

"The emergency doctor told us they would not have made it much longer - two, maybe three hours," said David Furtner, a spokesman for Upper Austria state police.

"The driver did not give a damn about the people in the back. We would not transport animals under these conditions on our roads in Austria," he added.

The 29-year-old Romanian driver of the van, which was carrying refugees from Bangladesh, Syria and Afghanistan, was arrested and the children and their parents were taken to a nearby hospital.

Grim discovery

This incident follows the discovery earlier this week of a truck abandoned on the side of an Austrian highway. It contained the corpses of 71 migrants, including four children, presumed to be from Syria and possibly Afghanistan. Police said Saturday that they hoped mobile phones found on some of the bodies would help speed the difficult process of identification.

The truck bore the markings of the Slovakian poultry company that had sold it last year but it had Hungarian license plates. It was in Hungary that four suspects involved in the human smuggling ring appeared before a court on Saturday and were remanded into custody. They face charges of torture in Hungary and manslaughter in Austria.

The judge ordered that the suspects, three Bulgarian and an Afghan, be detained for one month for questioning as European countries try to crack down on illegal trafficking of migrants within their borders.

es/sgb (AP, Reuters)