SOFIA, Feb 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — One migrant died and 32 were injured when a van crashed in Bulgaria on Sunday before dawn, the country’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
According to the statement, the vehicle that carried 45 men from Afghanistan, hit a roadside guardrail on the Trakia motorway about 180 km east of Sofia.
The injured were transferred to hospitals in Chipran and Stara Zagora.
The driver, believed to be a Pakistani citizen, had escaped, and authorities are searching for him, Stara Zagora district prosecutor Dicho Atanasov told the BTA state news agency.
The van had no seats in its passenger compartment and no windows along its side panels.
Authorities cited a punctured tire as the cause of the accident. The driver lost control of the vehicle and the van hit the guardrail.
The crash comes just over a week after the bodies of 18 migrants were found in a truck abandoned along a highway near Sofia on Feb 17. The driver of that truck also fled, and another 34 people were found in the truck in serious condition.
Five people have been remanded in custody in that case. They are accused of organizing a channel for the trafficking of migrants. Another suspect has been arrested in Greece, and a decision on whether to extradite him is pending.
Authorities discovered another van carrying 43 migrants near the town of Ihtiman, southeast of Sofia ,three days after the truck with the 18 bodies was found. District prosecutor Natalia Nikolova told the media that 10 of the migrants were children. She said all appeared to be healthy.
Deputy Prosecutor-General Borislav Sarafov told a news briefing on February 18 that the truck found with the 18 bodies was “another transport of migrants” carried out by an organized criminal group that has been making at least two such transports a month. — NNN-AGENCIES
