Seven detained in Bulgaria in the case of 18 dead migrants

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Bulgarian authorities have arrested seven people in connection with an abandoned truck containing the bodies of 18 suspected migrants, who were allegedly suffocated to death in a secret compartment under a load of wood, police said Saturday.

The truck was found abandoned on Friday on a road near the capital, Sofia.

The director of the Bulgarian National Investigation Service, Borislav Sarafov, confirmed that all the victims died of asphyxiation. He said it was the deadliest case recorded in the country linked to migrant smuggling.

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

All the passengers are from Afghanistan and entered Bulgaria from Turkey, hoping to reach Western Europe, authorities said.

Sarafov said the dead had died between 10 and 12 hours before the truck was found and that smugglers fled the scene after discovering the dead.

The seven suspects were detained in different places in Bulgaria. Investigators were trying to determine if the truck driver was among them.

The investigation indicates that the suspects belonged to an organized crime network involved in the smuggling of migrants from the Turkish border to the Bulgarian-Serbian border, Sarafov said. The passengers paid between 5,000 and 7,000 euros each, he said.

Bulgaria, a Balkan country of 7 million people and the poorest in the European Union, is on a major route for migrants fleeing the Middle East and Afghanistan to Europe. Only a small number of them remain in the country, preferring to use Bulgaria as a transit route to the west.

The Bulgarian government has erected a barbed wire fence along its 259 kilometer (161 mile) border with Turkey, but migrants fleeing poverty or conflict in their home country manage to enter with the help of smugglers.