A group of Romanian drivers and an Italian person were retained by Hungarian border police when it was found that the bus they were driving carried a Romanian and 16 Moldovan citizens without the necessary documentation and hidden in a luggage compartment, the Hungarian news agency MTI has announced.

The drivers were due to be grilled by investigators in Hungary under human trafficking suspicions after the event on Thursday. The discovery of the 17 illegal travellers was possible after the police interrogated a man lacking the necessary papers who said he crossed the border by foot and got in the bus on Hungarian territory.