WASHINGTON: Eight suspected migrants were found dead on Sunday inside an overheated truck in a Walmart parking lot in Texas, and nearly 30 others were hospitalised, in what police said appeared to be a “horrific” human trafficking crime.

Twenty of those taken to area hospitals after the discovery in San Antonio — about a two hour drive from the Mexican border — were in serious to “extremely critical” condition, suffering from heat stroke and dehydration, authorities said.

City police chief William McManus said the truck driver had been arrested.

At least 38 people were in the trailer, including fewer than two school-age children, Fire Chief Charles Hood said, but McManus later told CNN that the dead were all adult men.

“We got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot here,” McManus told a news conference.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2017