Update | Night train kills 14 migrants ‘sleeping’ on Macedonia tracks

A group of migrants trying to reach European opportunity via what’s billed by smugglers as a “safe” route – trekking along train tracks through the Balkans – was hit by an overnight train in a remote river gorge in Macedonia, killing 14.

  The deaths of the undocumented migrants from Africa and Asia underscore how, even as tens of thousands risk drowning in the Mediterranean to reach European shores, many others gamble with their lives by taking perilous overland journeys to reach Hungary, a popular back door to the 28-nation European Union.

 Railway officials said many of those killed on Thursday night had stopped to rest after an exhausting hours-long hike and were sleeping on the tracks when the train plowed into them.

  The overland route from Greece through Macedonia and Serbia has soared in popularity over the past two years as migrants seek a less dangerous path than the sea crossing from North Africa to Italy.

  Trains killed 40 migrants last year, usually in groups of one or two, compared to the more than 1,300 lives lost in the Mediterranean over the past three weeks alone – a horrifying statistic that has put 2015 on track to be the deadliest year ever for the sea crossing.