The number of dead could be as high as 50, they say.
The grim find comes as a summit focussing on migration takes place in the Austrian capital, Vienna.
Austrian
police said there appeared to be 20 to 50 bodies in
the lorry, judging
by its size. They described the deaths as a horrible crime.
The lorry was parked in a lay-by on the A4, the main road to Vienna, near the town of Pansdorf.
The vehicle had been there since Wednesday but was not found until early Thursday.
'Dark day'
The victims had been dead for some time and the bodies had begun to decompose.
Austria's
Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told a news conference it was a
"dark day" and that their thoughts were with the victims and their
families.
The tragedy again underlined the urgent need for common
EU policies to protect migrants and to combat people traffickers, she
said.
In Vienna, Serbia and Macedonia have told the summit that
EU must come up with an action plan to respond to the influx of migrants
into Europe.
A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU's borders last month and on Wednesday police counted more than 3,000 crossing into Serbia.
Germany has called on all European states to share the burden.
Thursday's
summit was expected to discuss ways to strengthen support for Western
Balkan states as well as ways of tackling human trafficking gangs and
providing better protection for the EU's external borders.
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