Bulgarian police arrested four people after they found the bodies of 18 migrants from Afghanistan, including a child, in an abandoned truck near Sofia, officials said.
Senior police official Atanas Ilkov said that one of the four detained persons has already been sentenced for human trafficking.
The Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior announced that the truck was transporting timber and hidden illegal migrants and that it was found near the village of Lokorsko.
The head of Bulgaria’s National Investigation Service, Borislav Sarafov, told reporters that some of the migrants had suffocated.
According to him, the migrants illegally crossed the border with Turkey and hid in the forest for two days before getting into a truck near the town of Yambol in southeastern Bulgaria.
Read More: More than 7,100 people have died in Earthquake
Bulgarian Health Minister Asen Medzhidiyev stated that 34 migrants, including five children, were rushed to Sofia hospitals.
Some of the migrants, he said, were in a critical but stable condition. He added that there was not enough oxygen in the truck.
– They froze, they were wet, they didn’t eat for several days – Medjidijev said.
