Romanian police detain 16 migrants from Iraq, Iran, Syria

BUCHAREST, Romania – Romanian border police have detained 16 migrants from Iraq, Syria and Iran who were hidden in a truck transporting dishes to Sweden.

Police stopped the truck that was driven by a Turkish citizen early Wednesday at the Romanian-Hungarian border and discovered the migrants in the back.

A police statement said they found nine men and seven women, most of them asylum-seekers in Romania. They told police they wanted to illegally cross the border to reach a country in the visa-free Schengen travel zone. Hungary is a member of that zone but Romania is not.

The truck documents said the metal dishes were to be delivered to a company in Sweden. The driver told police he didn’t know about the hidden migrants.