Migrant bodies found in Pakistan

Survivors were treated in hospital

Pakistani police have found 44 bodies inside a shipping container in what appears to have been a failed attempt at human trafficking.

Some 150 people are said to have been inside the container, most of them Afghans. The victims suffocated.

A number of survivors are being treated in hospital in the city of Quetta, in Baluchistan province.

The container reportedly belongs to a firm supplying Nato in Afghanistan and the driver's whereabouts are unknown.

It is believed that the container was en route to Iran from Afghanistan, via Pakistan.

Rasool Bakhsh, a senior police official in Quetta, said that police had opened the container following a tip-off.

The stench from the container suggested some victims might have been dead for days, he was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

Traffickers have used south-western Pakistan frequently to smuggle illegal migrants from the region to Europe.

At least 35 illegal migrants were found dead inside a container opened in Quetta in March 2006.

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