Budapest: Two people died and six were injured in southern Hungary near the Serbian border on Thursday when a car carrying illegal migrants hit a tree and turned over, Hungarian police said.
The car, which had a French number plate and was driven by a smuggler, according to a police statement, did not stop for police checks but accelerated before the accident happened near Kiskunmajsa. Police did not say how many illegal migrants were in the vehicle.
Police figures have shown a jump in illegal migrant crossings on Hungary’s southern border with Serbia in the past months, from where they head for Slovakia or Austria.
The migrants, predominantly young men from the Middle East and Afghanistan, arrive via the so-called Balkan route, entering Hungary from Serbia despite a steel fence that Prime Minister Viktor Orban had built after the 2015 migration crisis that rocked Europe.
Hungary pushes migrants back to Serbia – which is not in the EU – but they make repeated attempts to climb or cut through the fence, and many make it with the help of gangs of smugglers who then ferry them north, largely to the border with Slovakia.
On Wednesday, Slovakia’s caretaker government approved extending temporary controls on its border with Hungary until Nov. 3 as it seeks to clamp down on heightened illegal migration.
The small central European country installed the border controls on Oct. 5 for a period of 10 days, following neighbours Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria, which had earlier tightened their own frontiers with Slovakia.
In September alone, illegal migration to Slovakia was as high as in all of 2022.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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