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WORLD> Asia-Pacific
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62 migrants dead inside container in Pakistan
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-05 16:16 QUETTA, Pakistan -- At least 62 illegal migrants suffocated to death inside a shipping container found stuffed with more than 100 people in southwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan on Saturday, police said. Rasool Bakhsh, a senior police official in the city of Quetta, said the container had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan and was headed for Iran. He said most of the victims were Afghans.
More than 100 people were inside the metal container when police opened it on a tip-off, Bakhsh said. He said survivors were rushed to the hospital, many of them unconscious. Khalid Masood, another senior officer, said a total of 62 were pronounced dead. The stench from the container suggested some might have been dead for days, Bakhsh said. Officials ordered an investigation. Southwestern Pakistan lies on a well-trodden route for traffickers smuggling young men from poverty-afflicted countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan hoping to find work and prosperity in Europe and elsewhere. |
