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Feb 18, 2023 | 1:39am
Police found 18 migrants lying on the ground near an abandoned truck in Locorsko village near Sofia, Bulgaria, February 17, 2023.
APs
Bulgarian police on Friday found an abandoned truck containing the bodies of 18 migrants who appeared to have suffocated.
The interior ministry said initial information said the truck was carrying about 40 migrants, and the survivors were taken to a nearby hospital for emergency treatment.
Bulgarian Health Minister Assen Medidiev said most of the survivors were in very poor condition.
“They’re suffering from oxygen deprivation, their clothes are wet, they’re freezing, and they obviously haven’t eaten in days,” Medidiev said.
The truck was found abandoned on a highway near the capital Sofia. The driver was not there, but police found the passenger in a secret compartment under the cargo.
Authorities did not immediately disclose the immigrants’ nationalities. Bulgarian media reported that they were all from Afghanistan.
Bulgaria is a Balkan country with a population of seven million, the poorest country in the European Union, and lies on a major route for migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan trying to enter Europe from Turkey. Few people plan to stay here, and most people use Bulgaria as a way to travel west.
Bulgaria has erected a barbed wire fence along its 259-kilometer (161-mile) border with Turkey, but many migrants are still able to enter the country with the help of local traffickers.
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In October 2019, in the UK, police found 39 bodies inside a refrigerated container that had been brought to the UK. British police say the victims, aged 15 to his 44, were all from poor villages in Vietnam who paid smugglers to take them on dangerous journeys to a better life abroad. It is believed that
Police said he died from a combination of oxygen deprivation and overheating in the enclosed space. The truck, which was found in the town of Grays, east of London, had arrived in England by ferry from Zeebrugge, Belgium.