Four Killed As Truck With Migrants Overturns In Croatia

Four migrants were killed and 19 injured after a truck they were hiding in overturned Monday on a Croatian highway, police and hospital staff said

Zagreb, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Mar, 2021 ) :Four migrants were killed and 19 injured after a truck they were hiding in overturned Monday on a Croatian highway, police and hospital staff said.

The EU member state is a key transit country for migrants and refugees from the middle East, Asia and Africa crossing the Balkans in hopes of reaching Western Europe.

Police said they are still identifying the victims and probing the cause of the accident, which took place near the eastern town of Okucani close to the Bosnian border.

The truck, which was transporting rolls of carton paper and had Serbian plates, slipped off the highway and "some people fell out of the vehicle and some remained crushed under the heavy rolls", firefighting official Zlatko Pjes told Nova tv.

The migrants, who were riding in the truck's trailer, were in mainly their 30s, he said. The group also included two children.

Most of the 19 injured, who said they were Syrians, were hospitalised in three towns in the area, said Josip Kolodziej, a doctor in charge of a hospital in Nova Gradiska.

Earlier this month a migrant was killed and several others were injured in a landmine blast in central Croatia, a region still infested with explosive devices from the country's 1990s war.