Bodies Of 18 Migrants Found In Andoned Truck In Bulgaria

SOFIA, Bulgaria – On Friday, police in Bulgaria found the bodies of 18 migrants who seemed to have died of suffocation in a hidden compartment under a load of wood.

According to the Interior Ministry, the truck carried approximately 40 migrants, and the survivors were taken to nearby hospitals for emergency treatment.

According to Bulgarian Health Minister Assen Medzhidiev, most survivors are in critical condition.

“They have suffered from a lack of oxygen, their clothes are wet, they are freezing, and they have not eaten for days,” Medzhidiev explained.

The truck was discovered abandoned along a highway near Sofia. The driver was not present, but the passengers were discovered in a secret compartment beneath the lumber the vehicle was also carrying.

The Nationalities Of The Migrants Have Not Been Released

Authorities did not immediately disclose the nationalities of the migrants. According to Bulgarian media, they were all from Afghanistan.

Bulgaria, a Balkan country of 7 million people, is strategically located on a major migration route from the Middle East and Afghanistan to Europe. Only a small number of them intend to remain in the European Union’s poorest member, instead using Bulgaria as a transit route on their way west.

Bulgaria’s government erected a barbed-wire fence along its 259-kilometer (161-mile) border with Turkey to prevent illegal entry. On the other hand, foreigners fleeing poverty or conflict in their home countries manage to enter with the assistance of local smugglers.

While the deaths of refugees and asylum seekers en route to Europe are more common, the grim discovery in Bulgaria is not the first time groups of migrants have been discovered dead in abandoned vehicles.

British Police Discovered The Bodies Of 39 People

British police discovered the bodies of 39 people inside a refrigerated container that had been transported to England in October 2019. According to police, all of the victims, aged 15 to 44, were from impoverished villages in Vietnam and were believed to have paid smugglers to take them on a perilous journey to better lives abroad.

According to police, they died due to a lack of oxygen and overheating in an enclosed space. The truck discovered in Grays, east of London, had arrived in the country on a ferry from Zeebrugge, Belgium.

Another similar tragedy occurred in August 2015, when 71 migrants suffocated to death in the back of a refrigerated truck discovered on an Austrian highway.

In 2018, a court in Hungary found an Afghan man and three Bulgarians guilty of being part of a criminal group and committing multiple crimes related to the deaths, including human smuggling and murder.

Ten other defendants, mostly Bulgarians, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to twelve years.

SOURCE – (AP)