Hungarian police arrest four in connection with Austria lorry deaths

Hungarian police say they have arrested four people over the discovery of the bodies of 71 migrants, thought to be Syrian, in a lorry in Austria.

Three of those arrested are Bulgarian and one is Afghan.

The victims included 59 men, eight women and four children who are thought to have been dead for about two days.

The decomposing bodies were discovered by Austrian police on Thursday morning in the abandoned lorry, near the Hungarian border.

Officials said the victims probably died after suffocating in the vehicle.

The lorry was towed to a customs building with refrigeration facilities where forensic teams worked through the night to examine the bodies.

The group are thought to have been dead when the vehicle crossed into Austria from Hungary. Among the victims was a girl aged between one and two years old.

The local police chief said a travel document found on the vehicle suggested that the group were Syrian migrants.

"Our preliminary assumption is of course that they were refugees, possibly a group of Syrian refugees," Hans Peter Doskozil, Burgenland province police chief, told reporters.