Authorities in Bulgaria discovered on Friday an abandoned vehicle carrying the dead of 18 migrants, who looked to have died of suffocation.
According to initial reports from the Interior Ministry, the truck was transporting approximately forty migrants, and the survivors were transported to neighboring hospitals for emergency care.
According to Bulgarian Health Minister Assen Medzhidiev, the majority of survivors are in critical condition.
“They have suffered from oxygen deprivation, their clothing is wet, they are freezing, and they have obviously not eaten for days,” Medzhidiev said.
The truck was discovered abandoned on a motorway near Sofia. The passengers were located by the police in a hidden compartment beneath a shipment of lumber.
Officials did not provide the nationalities of the migrants immediately. The media in Bulgaria said that they were all from Afghanistan.
Bulgaria, a 7-million-person Balkan nation and the poorest member of the European Union, is situated on a significant route for Middle Eastern and Afghan migrants wanting to access Europe via Turkey. Relatively few intend to stay, with the majority utilizing Bulgaria as a passageway to the west.
Bulgaria has erected a barbed-wire barrier along its 259-kilometer (161-mile) border with Turkey, but many migrants still manage to enter with the assistance of local human traffickers.
In England in October of 2019, police discovered 39 dead inside a refrigerated container that had been transported there. All of the victims, ranging in age from 15 to 44, are believed to have come from destitute towns in Vietnam and paid smugglers to take them on a dangerous journey to better life abroad.
According to the police, they died due to a lack of air and overheating in a confined environment. The truck found near the town of Grays, east of London, had arrived in the United Kingdom via boat from Zeebrugge, Belgium.
»18 bodies of migrants were discovered in an abandoned vehicle in Bulgaria«
↯↯↯Read More On The Topic On TDPel Media ↯↯↯