Pakistan finds 46 dead Afghans in truck container
The container was found about 20 kilometres south of Quetta, capital of oil and gas rich Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, police said, adding it was unclear where it came from or where it was going. "The death toll is 46," police official Ghulam Dastagir told AFP from the southwestern province after the bodies were found on Saturday. "Forty-five people are unconscious and have been admitted to hospital," the official added.
Police earlier told AFP they counted 44 bodies pulled out of the container. "We have been able to talk to some of the people, who were trapped in the container. They were all Afghans in the container and the container was going to Iran," said senior police official in Quetta, Wazir Khan Nasir. "When the condition of people inside the container deteriorated, the driver fled, leaving the container," Nasir said.
Survivor Nizar Ahmed, 15, told AFP from hospital that he came from the province of Paktia in eastern Afghanistan. "We have all come from Afghanistan and we were going to Iran," he said without being able to explain why they were bound for the Islamic republic, which borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan, or when they left home.
Police official Mohammad Zaman Karim said that around 110 people were crammed into the trucking container, adding that the driver and his assistant apparently fled after suspecting that people inside the container had died. Three of the dead were teenagers aged between 13 to 15, he added. Local inhabitants and police realised there were people inside when they heard sounds coming from within the container, police said.
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