ISTANBUL, July 30: Thirteen illegal immigrants, mostly Pakistanis, were found dead in a field on the outskirts of Istanbul on Wednesday, suffocated in a packed truck, Turkish police said.

The truck was carrying 138 illegal immigrants through Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, local official Dogan Azat told the state-run news agency Anatolia.

The bodies were dumped in a field on the outskirts of the European part of the city, Azat said in Istanbul’s Kucukcekmece district.

Turkey is a major trafficking route for illegal immigrants trying to enter the European Union from Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. They are often transported in overcrowded vehicles.

Television images showed a hilly rock-strewn area cordoned off by police near a narrow two-lane road.

Security officials were carrying large bundles into a forensics vehicle.

“Our investigations are continuing,” a police officer, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

Media reports said the majority of the dead were Pakistani, but no other details were immediately available.—Reuters