SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) – Police in Bulgaria on Friday discovered an abandoned truck containing the bodies of 18 migrants, who appeared to have suffocated.
The interior ministry said the truck had carried about 40 migrants, according to initial information, and the survivors had been taken to nearby hospitals for emergency treatment.
Bulgarian Health Minister Assen Medzhidiev said most of the survivors were in very poor condition.
“They have suffered from lack of oxygen, their clothes are wet, they are cold and they obviously haven’t eaten for days,” Medzhidiev said.
The truck was found abandoned on a highway near the capital Sofia. The driver wasn’t there, but police discovered the passengers in a secret compartment under a load of wood.
The authorities did not immediately reveal the nationalities of the migrants. Bulgarian media reported that they were all from Afghanistan.
Bulgaria, a Balkan country of 7 million people and the poorest member of the European Union, lies on a major route for migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan trying to enter Europe from Turkey. Few plan to stay, most using Bulgaria as a transit corridor on their way west.
Bulgaria has erected a barbed wire fence along its 259-kilometer border with Turkey, but many migrants still manage to get inside with the help of local traffickers.
In October 2019, in Great Britain, police found the bodies of 39 people in a refrigerated container that had been transported to England. British police said all of the victims, aged 15 to 44, were from impoverished villages in Vietnam and are said to have paid smugglers to take them on a risky journey to a better life abroad.
Police said they died from a combination of lack of oxygen and overheating in an enclosed space. The lorry, spotted in the town of Grays, east of London, had arrived in England on a ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium.
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