VELES, Macedonia — Fourteen suspected migrants from Afghanistan and Somalia, walking in the dark along train tracks toward the European Union, were killed by a nighttime express train in a remote river gorge in Macedonia, police said Friday.
The migrants, part of a larger group, had been walking north of the central Macedonian town of Veles about 10:30 p.m. Thursday night when a passenger train traveling from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki to the Serbian capital, Belgrade, struck them.
"The train driver tried to stop, but it was too late and the train hit the group of migrants who weren't able to leave the tracks," said Nikola Kostov, general manager of Macedonian Railways.
Kostov said the train driver saw about 100 migrants on the tracks, and spotted them with only 100 yards and a few seconds before impact. He called the stretch of railway, bounded on one side by the River Vardar and the other by a steep slope, as "dangerous and unapproachable."
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