The bodies of 18 migrants were found in a truck - yesterday, Friday - at a distance of about 20 km from the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, at a time when the country is facing an unprecedented influx of migrants since the 2015 crisis.
Residents told the police that there was an abandoned truck near the village of Lukorsko, 20 km from the capital.
According to preliminary information provided by the government, the truck was illegally carrying 52 people hidden under bundles of wood.
The Ministry of the Interior said earlier that the number of these immigrants is about 40.
Borislav Sarafov, Deputy Prosecutor General, told reporters that these people, who are from Afghanistan, had entered Bulgarian territory a few days ago after crossing the fence that was built on the border with Turkey with a ladder, and explained that they died of suffocation as a large number of people were crammed into a very small area.
He pointed out that it is the largest immigration-related tragedy ever occurring in Bulgaria, and Sarafov revealed that 4 suspects had been arrested, stressing that "there is no doubt that we will find whoever caused the death of 18 innocent people."
According to investigators' notes, the migrants spent 10 to 12 hours before their bodies were found.
Conflicting information was circulated about their ages.
Among the 18 people who died was a 6- or 7-year-old boy, according to a health ministry press release, but Sarafov said the youngest was a teenager.
And the transfer of 34 injured people to the hospital, and at this stage they refuse to speak.
"They suffered from a lack of oxygen, they were cold, and they certainly hadn't eaten for days," Health Minister Esen Medidev said.
Bulgaria, which is a gateway to entering the European Union, has seen a rise in the number of clandestine migrants on its territory, despite the presence of a barbed wire fence along its 234-kilometer border with Turkey.
This tragedy is reminiscent of the finding of the bodies of 39 Vietnamese in 2019 in a refrigerated truck near London.
Austria witnessed a similar tragedy in 2019, and the police then found an abandoned refrigerated truck on the side of a highway in Parndorf near the Hungarian border, containing the decomposing bodies of 71 migrants, men, women and children.