The Sunday Mail
More than 60 people believed to be migrants from Ethiopia have been found dead in a cargo container in Mozambique’s northwest Tete province, according to officials.
Police and immigration authorities stopped the truck en route from Malawi in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the province of Tete, bordered by Malawi on one side and Zimbabwe on the other.
Amelia Direito, spokeswoman for Tete migration services, said the officials checked the container after hearing banging coming from inside. They found 14 people alive among the bodies of 64 who had died from suspected asphyxiation.
“The truck driver and his assistant, both Mozambicans, have been arrested by the police,” Direito said.
She added the driver told police he had been promised 30 000 meticais (about US$500) to transport the men. Police have launched a manhunt for “the intermediary who facilitated the illegal entry of the Ethiopians into the country,” she said.
The foreign ministry in Addis Ababa said it had “confirmed through the Ethiopian embassy in South Africa that many Ethiopians travelling inside a vehicle from Malawi to Mozambique have died”. — Aljazeera
