(ANSA-AFP) - VIENNA, MAR 11 - Europe-wide investigations have led to the dismantling of a major network smuggling people from Turkey to Germany along the southeast Balkan route, Austrian police said Tuesday. More than 100,000 people are believed to have been smuggled between autumn 2023 and May 2025 from Turkey through southeast Europe and Austria to Germany, police said in a statement. The smugglers have raked in more than one billion euros ($1.2 billion), it said. Since 2023, more than 130 people have been arrested, mainly in Austria but also in Croatia, Romania, Germany and other countries, a police spokesman told AFP. Since last May, six main suspects -- men between 25 and 50 from Afghanistan, Syria and Russia, who lived in Vienna and Budapest -- are being held in Vienna. Others who were arrested are men and women mainly between 18 and 35 years old, from Moldova, Romania, Georgia and Ukraine, often recruited via social media channels, police added in the statement. A 2023 incident where police in Austria's Styria province, near the border with Slovenia, stopped a vehicle with eight smuggled Syrians set off the "extensive" investigation, they said. The network, originating from a Syrian clan, is believed to have had several hundred members along the southeast Balkan route. Investigators found five "autonomous sub-organisations" operated along different sections of the route, each with up to 80 drivers. More than 1,000 vehicles used to smuggle people have been identified, police said. EU countries in recent years have stepped up border controls to try to stop smugglers bringing people from war-torn Syria and other countries to Europe. (ANSA-AFP).