Hungarian police find suffocating immigrants

Hungarian police say they've found a van packed with forty-six illegal immigrants who were close to suffocation.

The immigrants -- from Somalia, Nepal, India and Afghanistan -- were locked in the van, which had to be forced open as the driver had no key.

Police said the forty-six, who included three children and one woman, could have died within an hour if they'd not been freed.

The driver, a Hungarian, was arrested on suspicion of people-smuggling.

The immigrants are being held in a camp pending hearings on their cases. In June fifty-eight illegal immigrants from China were found dead from suffocation inside a truck that arrived in Britain from Belgium.

The Hungarian authorities estimate that up to ten thousand people enter the country illegally every year to try to reach the European Union.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service