Eighteen migrants have died in Bulgaria, a Balkan country faced in recent months with an influx of illegal immigrants. Their bodies were found in the trailer of a lorry near the capital Sofia.
The migrants died of asphyxiation after being locked up for more than an entire day in the trailer of an abandoned truck, our correspondent in Sofia tells us, Damian Vodenitcharov. The vehicle was found in a town located about ten kilometers north of the capital Sofia.
According to the inhabitants of the village, this is not the first time that vehicles carrying migrants have been abandoned there. Eight people were arrested by the police, including the owner of the truck. The head of the smuggling ring is among the suspects, a government official said. He had previously been sentenced to a five-month suspended prison sentence for human trafficking.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the truck was illegally transporting 52 people hidden under wooden planks, a priori Afghan migrants from Turkey. Once at the scene, investigators discovered a grisly scene with bodies strewn on the grass around the truck.
Some 34 migrants were rescued and taken to hospital on Friday. Some of them are being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after inhaling exhaust fumes, according to Spas Spaskov, an emergency doctor at Pirogov Hospital in Sofia.
More and more immigrants
This drama echoes the discovery in 2019 of the bodies of 39 Vietnamese in a refrigerated truck near London. Austria was hit by a similar tragedy in 2019. Police found an abandoned refrigerated truck on the side of an Austrian highway in Parndorf, near the Hungarian border, with 71 men on board. , decomposing women and children.
As a gateway to the European Union (EU), Bulgaria saw an upsurge in illegal immigration on its territory last year, despite the presence of a barbed wire fence of 234 km along the border with Turkey.
The number of arrested migrants rose from 9,000 people in 2021 to 15,000 in 2022. In December 2022, the Netherlands and Austria opposed Bulgaria’s joining theSchengen area due to concerns about the country’s border security and the fight against corruption.
(and with agencies)