Bulgarian police find 18 people dead in an abandoned truck carrying migrants

First modification: 02/17/2023 – 21:48

The vehicle “illegally transported about 40 migrants hidden under some wood,” the Interior Ministry said. “Eighteen of them have died.” It is believed to be one of the deadliest human trafficking incidents on record in the country.

After the inhabitants of the area alerted the police, they discovered that the truck was near the town of Lokorsko, 20 kilometers northeast of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

So far, the cause of death of the migrants has not been established.

“I cannot say for sure what happened. They lacked oxygen, they were cold and wet, and of course they had not eaten for several days,” Health Minister Asen Medjidiev told reporters.

Fourteen of the people found still alive in the truck, eight of them in serious condition, were taken to hospital, it added. Ten other people were found hiding in nearby bushes and will be taken to hospital for examination, Medjidiev said.

According to public radio BNR, all the occupants of the truck are believed to be Afghans. A photographer from the AFP news agency saw several ambulances leaving the scene. He was looking for the smugglers who are believed to have driven the truck and fled, according to authorities.

Increase in influx

Bulgaria, an EU member country that serves as the gateway to the bloc, has tried to tighten security to stem the growing number of people trying to cross the border.

The country has intensified controls along the 234-kilometre barbed wire fence that covers almost the entire border with Turkey.

The border police thwarted 164,000 “irregular crossing” attempts in 2022, compared to 55,000 in 2021, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior. Austria and the Netherlands have blocked Sofia’s attempt to join the Schengen border-free zone.

Bulgaria has faced mounting allegations that it is mistreating people trying to cross from Turkey, with asylum seekers claiming they have been pushed, locked up, stripped naked and beaten, though Bulgarian authorities have repeatedly denied the allegations.

Last year three police officers died when they were hit by vehicles carrying people. Sofia, for her part, has asked the EU for 2.1 billion dollars to reinforce the border fence and improve surveillance, but Brussels has so far refused.

Friday’s gruesome discovery drew comparisons to previous cases. In August 2015, at the height of the European migration crisis, the bodies of 71 migrants, including a girl, were found stacked in the back of an abandoned poultry refrigerated truck in Austria.

In 2019, 39 Vietnamese migrants were found dead in a refrigerated truck in Britain shortly after crossing the English Channel from mainland Europe.

Several similar but less fatal incidents have been recorded in recent years, such as in Croatia, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands.

*With AFP; adapted from its original in English