Austrian police have started searching freight trains traveling from Italy at night to tackle illegal migrations in new front line on illegal migration and avert further deaths after two stowaways died earlier this month.
Many stowaways resorting to traveling across the Mediterranean in flimsy boats to reach Italy. Most of them want to go north to Austria, Germany or Scandinavian countries some as stowaways on freight trains.
Since early November, police have picked up about 90 African migrants heading for Germany on railways in Tyrol, which are used by most cargo trains going from Italy across the Alps.
A man and a woman from Eritrea who had hidden on a train bringing trucks from Italy were crushed to death in Austria’s Tyrol province
Police stop and search all goods trains coming from Italy between 2200-0600 local time in the shadows of the ski slopes of the sleepy border town of Steinach, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) closer to Italy than Woergl, where the two migrants died.
Austrian Anti-human trafficking unit at the Interior Ministry reported, police pick up about 100 to 150 illegal immigrants a day in Austria.
Last month, one migrant died from an electric shock received after climbing on the roof of a truck transported on a train in Austria’s Styria province.
In another recent case, a group of people had been locked into a freight train wagon in Turkey and were found barely alive in Austria.
