Bulgaria detains 7 people in connection with the death of 18 migrants found in a truck

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Bulgarian authorities have detained seven people in connection with an abandoned truck in which the bodies of 18 people believed to be migrants were found, police said Saturday.

The bodies were discovered Friday in a secret compartment under a load of lumber in a truck that had been abandoned on a highway near Bulgaria’s capital Sofia.

Borislav Sarafov, director of the National Investigative Service of Bulgaria, confirmed that all the victims died of asphyxiation. He called the smuggled migrant case the deadliest in the country.

Police also found 34 survivors in the truck, most of them in very poor physical condition, Bulgarian Health Minister Asen Medzhidiev said.

All passengers were originally from Afghanistan and arrived in Bulgaria from Turkey, hoping to reach Western Europe, authorities said.

Sarafov said the people who died died 10-12 hours before the truck was found, and that the smugglers fled the scene after noticing the deaths.

Seven suspects were detained in different places in Bulgaria. Investigators determined whether the truck driver was among them.

The investigation indicates that the suspects belonged to an organized crime group that smuggled migrants from the Turkish border to the Bulgarian-Serbian border, Sarafov said. According to him, passengers paid 5-7 thousand euros each.

Bulgaria, a Balkan country of 7 million people and the poorest member of the European Union, is located on the main route for migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan seeking to enter Europe from Turkey. Very few plan to stay, most using Bulgaria as a transit corridor on their way to the west.

Bulgaria has erected a barbed wire fence along its 259-kilometer (161-mile) border with Turkey, but with the help of local traffickers, many migrants still manage to get in.

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