Bodies of 27 migrants discovered in Zambia
In the Zambian capital, Lusaka, police have found the bodies of 27 suspected migrants from Ethiopia or Somalia. One person who was still alive was certainly taken to hospital, police spokesman Danny Mwale told the German news agency DPA.
Source: BELGA
The victims, meanwhile, have suffocated in transit, but conditions are still confused. According to Danny Mwale, she was in a truck. “We hope that the lone survivors can help us further to reconstruct the uncertain conditions.”
Zambia, with eighteen million inhabitants, has been fighting illegal human trafficking for years. According to UN refugee agency UNHCR, Zambia has more than 105,000 refugees from neighboring countries such as Congo, Burundi, Angola and Rwanda.
By regional standards, Zambia is considered politically quite stable. A peaceful transition of power took place in the country in 2021, but Zambia faced a range of challenges, ranging from widespread poverty to malnutrition and the effects of global warming. At the end of 2020, Zambia also had to declare insolvency towards international creditors.