A tragedy similar to what happened a few days ago in Essex, England, where 39 migrants from Asia were found dead in a truck, was avoided at the last minute in Xanthi, Greece on Monday morning.
Following a routine police check along the Egnatia Highway in Thrace, forty-one migrants were found packed together, locked inside a truck.
The panel truck was heading toward Thessaloniki when it was stopped for a regular check by police authorities after it had passed the tollbooths at Xanthi on the highway of Egnatia.
The police officers discovered the unfortunate men, who were all between 20 and 30 years of age, after opening the back of the truck to conduct a routine investigation of its contents.
Local media are reporting that some of the men crammed into the back of the truck were experiencing severe respiratory problems because the air in the back of the truck was running out.
It is not an exaggeration to suggest that if the police hadn’t stopped the truck just when they did, some of the men would have already died due to the lack of oxygen in the confined space.
The driver of the vehicle has been arrested and many of the migrants are now at the hospital at Xanthi, receiving treatment for their respiratory problems.
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