More than 60 undocumented migrants believed to be Ethiopians have been found dead in a cargo truck in Mozambique's northwestern Tete province on Tuesday.
Police and immigration authorities stopped the truck en route from Malawi in the early hours of the morning in Tete, bordered by Malawi on one side and Zimbabwe on the other, officials said.
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 Mozambican driver later admitted he had been hired to smuggle the migrants from Malawi to Mozambique.
The survivors will be screened for the coronavirus and quarantined, health officials said.
Many poor migrants travel via Mozambique on their way into South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized economy, where they usually hope to find better work.
“Two people were detained in connection to the incident, the driver and a middleman, who contracted the driver to ferry these people,” police spokesman Orlando Mudumane said.
