Eighteen bodies of migrants who died of asphyxiation in a truck were found on Friday in Bulgaria, a Balkan country faced in recent months with an influx of illegal immigrants.
The police were informed by a villager of the presence of this abandoned vehicle near the village of Lokorsko, about twenty kilometers from Sofia, the capital.
Once at the scene, investigators discovered a grisly scene with bodies strewn on the grass around the truck.
According to the first elements, it was illegally transporting 52 people hidden under wooden planks.
"They died of asphyxiation - too many people were crammed into too small a space," Deputy Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov told AFP.
This is the deadliest immigration tragedy that Bulgaria has ever known, he said.
According to the observations of the investigators, the migrants perished ten to twelve hours before their bodies were found, the smugglers having then fled.
A priori originating from Afghanistan, they entered Bulgarian territory a few days ago after crossing "using a ladder" the fence erected on the border with Turkey.
Conflicting information circulated about their age. Among the 18 people who died "is a child between the ages of six and seven", according to a statement from the Ministry of Health, but Mr Sarafov said the youngest was a teenager.
Thirty-four migrants have been hospitalized and are currently refusing to speak.
"They lacked oxygen, were cold and soaked, they certainly hadn't eaten for several days," said Health Minister Assen Medjediev.
"There is no doubt that we will find those who caused the death of 18 innocent people," promised Borislav Sarafov, announcing the arrest of four suspects of Bulgarian nationality.
As a gateway to the European Union (EU), Bulgaria saw an upsurge in illegal immigration to its territory last year, despite the presence of a 234 km barbed wire fence along the border with Turkey.
Three police officers were killed in 2022 when vehicles carrying illegal immigrants hit their car.
Rejected from the Schengen free movement area in December after already ten years of waiting due to a veto by Austria and the Netherlands, Bulgaria has intensified controls in recent months.
Sometimes with the use of brutal methods, according to testimonies recently collected by AFP, stories from NGOs or even reports from Frontex, the European Border Surveillance Agency.
The police themselves say they prevented 164,000 crossing attempts in 2022, compared to 55,000 a year earlier.
This poor Balkan country has asked the EU for two billion euros to modernize and strengthen the current fence and several member states are pleading for such a solution.
Migration has returned to the top of the concerns of the European Union, with the increase in the number of irregular arrivals and asylum applications on its soil in 2022, which has put the reception capacities of certain States under pressure.
Already in October 2021, 12 countries had requested that the EU fund this type of wall, to respond to the arrival of migrants via Belarus.
This drama in Bulgaria 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 August 2015, in the midst of a migration crisis. Police found an abandoned refrigerated truck on the side of a highway with 71 decomposing bodies of men, women and children on board.
An Afghan and three Bulgarians were sentenced on appeal to life imprisonment in June 2019.
Several similar but less deadly cases have been recorded in recent years, notably in Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland and Croatia.
02/17/2023 21:42:29 - Lokorsko (Bulgaria) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
