Police tried to stop the Mercedes Vito at around 03:00 on Friday. The driver hit the accelerator instead. By the time the van rolled over several times at a junction on the A94 motorway in Bavaria, it was doing 180 km/h (112 mph), and seven of the 23 people inside were dead.
The van was built to carry nine. It had Austrian plates and had covered about 50 kilometers toward Munich from the Austrian border when officers flagged it down near the Ampfing/Waldkraiburg junction. Police said the overcrowding contributed to the high death toll.
Who was in the van
The National reported that the dead were from Syria and Turkey. A six-year-old girl was among them. Fifteen other passengers were hurt, women and children included, and were taken to nearby hospitals. Some were thrown from the van as it rolled. Police spokesperson Stefan Sonntag said officers had “no information where the people were from or their nationality,” though the National cited the injured as also from Turkey and Syria.
The driver survived. Police described him as a 24-year-old stateless man living in Austria, and he was arrested. “The driver and suspected people smuggler survived and is among those injured,” Sonntag said. Prosecutors are investigating a possible case of homicide, and officials blocked roads leading to Munich.
Calls for tougher borders
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement: “It shows the cruel way in which smugglers put people’s lives at risk.” She said authorities “must destroy the cruel trade of the people-smuggling gangs who make profit out of people’s desperation.”
Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria’s interior minister, told the news agency dpa the crash showed “how important it is to further strengthen immediate border controls so that smugglers are stopped at the border.”
The A94 is considered a regular route for smugglers bringing people in from Austria. It was not the only crash that week. A car with French plates, thought to be carrying migrants, overturned in Hungary on Thursday, killing two and injuring six. A week earlier a vehicle crashed in Burghausen, on the German-Austrian border about 50 km from Friday’s site, injuring four.
Pressure on Berlin
Germany recorded more than 250,000 asylum claims in the year to September, more than in all of 2022. First-time requests rose by 78% in the first seven months of 2023, and police say smugglers help about a quarter of migrants get into the country. The surge has put pressure on ministers and fed support for the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Faeser announced in September that police checks on known trafficking routes would increase, and controls on the eastern border were tightened from early October. Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany have all reimposed border checks, and Polish authorities say the checks have cut crossings. Chancellor Olaf Scholz was due to hold migration talks with opposition and regional leaders on Friday, after local authorities complained that they cannot handle the influx while also housing Ukrainian refugees. Ministers had also unveiled a draft deportation law that week.
Sources
- Germany: 7 dead in suspected migrant smuggling car crash
- Seven Syrians and Turks killed in migrant van crash in Germany | The National
- Germany migrants: Seven dead after vehicle crashes in Bavaria
