Cairo: Police have arrested the driver of a tuk-tuk, a motorised three-wheeler vehicle, in connection with the gruesome death of three children whose bodies were dumped in garbage bags in Cairo last week.
The charred bodies were found on a street in Giza, south of Cairo. Security sources suggested on Saturday that the bodies were likely of orphans who may have died in a fire at an orphanage.
The mystery began to unravel after a surveillance camera on the scene captured the driver of a tuk-tuk transporting two hitherto-unidentified women with the bodies to the place, a security source said.
“The driver was arrested and he confessed to have driven both women to the place, but without knowing what they had inside the bags,” the source added on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Police are tracking down the two women and arrested other suspects, previously convicted in separate cases related to child abductions, according to the source.
The three victims are believed to have died in a blaze inside an unlicensed orphanage and that those in charge of the place disposed off their bodies for fear of facing legal problems.
On Tuesday, passers-by in Giza’s district of Al Maryutia, stumbled upon the bodies packed in plastic bags, triggering public fears that they had been killed and their organs illegally removed.
The chilling mystery has since made headlines in Egypt and prompted massive police hunt for the suspects.
Autopsy examinations showed that the three children, aged 18 months, two and six years old, died in a fire, and that their organs were intact. They were also found to be unrelated.
Egypt has recently stepped up a clampdown on illegal trading in human organs.
On Thursday, an Egyptian court sentenced 37 people, including doctors, to three to 15 years in prison on charges of involvement in illicit multimillion-dollar trafficking in human organs.
