"The driver thought there were just clothes abandoned on the beach," said a police official. "He drove over them."

The driver was arrested for homicide by accident, the official said.

The Romanian couple had been sleeping on the beach at the Paleo Faliro coastal suburb for a month, police said.

Many migrants use Greece as their springboard to the rest of Europe. It has become common for those who cannot find housing to sleep on the beach in the summer, the police official said.