Romania police find 42 refugees hidden in truck near western border

Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-22 01:36:38|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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BUCHAREST, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Romanian border police on Monday found 42 asylum-seekers inside a freight truck who tried to leave the country for western European countries via Hungary.

According to the border police, they stopped a truck driven by a Turkish citizen in Nadlac, a western town near the border with Hungary, and found 25 men, 11 women and six minors in the vehicle.

Following the checks, it was established that the people concerned are citizens of Iraq, Syria and the Comoros, aged between 7 and 57 years, most of whom are asylum-seekers in Romania.

They admitted that they resorted to the method to reach the Schengen area.

The Turkish driver, who was transporting textile materials from Turkey to Germany, told the police that he was unaware of how the people in question hid in the truck while he was stationed in several car parks.

Romania has become one of the transit countries for immigrants from Syria and Iraq to Western Europe.

Official data of the Romanian Border Police showed that in the first half of this year, about 2,500 foreigners tried to cross the Romanian border illegally, a five-fold increase compared with the same period of 2016.

Some 1,437 of these migrants were caught at entry while trying to leave the country for western European countries, mainly via Hungary.

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