This article is a list of illegal migrant vehicle incidents in Europe, involving injury and/or loss of life. Illegal migrants to Europe who have boarded transport vehicles have occasionally been injured or killed in crashes or suffocation incidents. In addition to the illegal migrants themselves, drivers and passengers of vehicles have also been injured or killed[citation needed] – either unintentionally or deliberately – as a result of migrant activity.
The victims were found in a business park in an intermodal container carrying furniture from Italy. They entered the container the night of December 3–4 at a truck stop in Groot-Bijgaarden, Belgium. The plan was for a three-hour voyage from Zeebrugge to Dover rather than a 102-hour voyage in stormy weather to Belview Harbour at Waterford. The dead were all Turks, including four children; the survivors were Turkish, Algerian, and Kosovo Albanian. In 2003 a Belgian court sentenced a London-based Turk and six Belgium-based Kosovars and Moroccans to between two and ten years' imprisonment, the longest in absentia.[3]
Iraqi Kurdish illegal migrant found dead and two arrested when police stopped a lorry. The dead man had been crushed by the movement of metal containers.[4]
24 illegal migrants were injured (3 seriously) when the truck they were travelling in overturned. There were 30 migrants in the vehicle at the time.[6]
Police discovered a truck along the A4 highway and found 71 deceased illegal migrants, including eight children. The truck, which had been parked on the hard shoulder in between the villages of Neusiedl and Parndorf, had been noticed by an employee of the ASFiNAG highway agency who observed liquid seeping out and informed police.[8] All migrants had suffocated within hours of boarding.[9] The driver claimed he did not know how to keep the doors partially shut, in a way that air could seep in. It is not clear when he became aware that the migrants were deceased.[10] In June 2018, the driver and three others were given 25-year sentences on homicide charges. They stated that they regretted what had happened and had not wanted the victims to die.[9]
An Iraqi illegal migrant was found crushed to death attempting to reach the UK illegally with the help of a Hungarian lorry driver near Calais when he inspected his cargo after "braking for reasons unknown". Two other relatives were found uninjured.[11]
A woman collapsed and was taken to hospital while a boy suffered a leg injury after 26 illegal migrants were found in the back of a Romanian-registered refrigerated lorry. The lorry had been travelling to the UK from Spain.[12]
Mick Young, a lorry driver from Essex, was violently assaulted by a group of migrants angered by the recent demolition of the Calais migrant camp. The migrants forced Young to stop, then attacked him with sticks, rocks, metal bars and lumps of concrete, leaving him with cuts to his forehead and a wound to his eye which required medical attention.[13]
One man required urgent medical attention for inhalation of hazardous fumes and several others received medical attention after 28 illegal migrants were found in the back of a refrigerated lorry.[14]
An Eritrean man was found dead when a Hungarian-registered lorry stopped at a cafe. French authorities had checked the vehicle in Calais, removing 'around 10' migrants from Eritrea from the lorry.[15]
A Polish van driver was killed after his vehicle slammed into the back of an articulated lorry stopped by a group of Eritrean illegal migrants, who had blocked the A16 autoroute with tree limbs to break into vehicles. The vehicle exploded upon impact, killing the driver instantly. Nine migrants were arrested.[16]
25 July 2017
A16 autoroute near Calais, Hauts-de-France, France
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An HGV driver was left hospitalised with severe injuries after being beaten over the head with a brick by a group of illegal migrants who had stopped his truck; the migrants then hijacked the driver's vehicle and drove it towards the port, but were apprehended by police.[17]
29 December 2017
Calais, Hauts-de-France, France
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An Eritrean illegal migrant was crushed to death after the truck in which he was stowed away under a several-tonne pile of paper rolls crashed.[18]
A Chadian illegal migrant was crushed to death under coach when it started moving. The incident was not discovered until a routine check at Folkestone.[19]
Two illegal migrants died of heatstroke and suffocation and two others were in serious condition after hiding in a tanker truck near the border with Hungary. The driver discovered them when he opened the tank and saw them lying unconscious. At least two of the migrants were from Afghanistan.[20]
An illegal migrant died after a fall or jump from a Romanian truck onto a highway in South Holland. All the migrants were presumably from Eritrea.[21][22]
A woman died after a truck carrying 12 illegal migrants fell into a river after the driver fled a checkpoint near the border. The migrants were from Egypt and Pakistan.[23]
Six illegal migrants were killed and another 10 injured when a smuggling jeep carrying them through northern Greece crashed into an irrigation ditch.[24][25]
A Portuguese lorry driver suffered a fatal heart attack after a group of migrants stopped his vehicle, then punched him in the head when he left the cab and attempted to stop them from hijacking it.[28][29]
Seven people, including a child, were killed after a minivan driven by a suspected people-smuggler overturned on the A94 motorway while trying to evade police.[31]
