ANDAU, Austria — A suspected human smuggler was arrested early Monday after a high-speed police pursuit ended in a violent crash near the border town of Andau in Austria’s Burgenland province. Authorities said eleven people were injured, including two young girls.
The chase began late Sunday night when Hungarian police tried to stop a van driven by a Pakistani national suspected of smuggling migrants across the border. The driver ignored orders to halt and raced into Austrian territory, where he lost control and slammed into a farm building in the district of Neusiedl am See.
Inside the vehicle were ten migrants, men and women from Turkey and Afghanistan, along with two children aged seven and ten. All were injured and taken to hospitals in Vienna, Eisenstadt, and Wiener Neustadt, police confirmed.
The smuggler himself was seriously wounded and trapped in the wreck. Firefighters had to cut him free before he was airlifted to Wiener Neustadt Hospital, where he remains under police guard.
“The man has been arrested, and investigations are ongoing,” said a spokesperson for the Burgenland State Police Directorate, adding that officers are examining possible links to larger smuggling networks.
The crash underscores Austria’s growing struggle with human trafficking and border smuggling, as criminal networks increasingly use high-speed routes through Burgenland to move migrants from Hungary into the European Union.
