The police are treating the discovery of a body inside a van on the cliffs of Selmun as a murder case, investigating officers informed a press conference called late yesterday afternoon.

The victim was a 29-year-old Syrian man residing in Hamrun who had lived in Malta for at least the last six years.

The man appears to have been bludgeoned about the head between Sunday night and yesterday morning, after which the culprit or culprits unsuccessfully attempted to conceal the crime by pushing a van holding the body off the side of a cliff.

The police had received a report from the public late yesterday morning to the effect that a person might have been trapped inside a van on the cliff face.

But district police and Civil Protection Department personnel arriving at the scene found a white Ford Escort van, which appeared to have been pushed off a cliff face, with a body inside.

The van, registered in the name of the victim, however, failed to make a full descent and became caught on the rocks as it fell. Police said yesterday that investigations would have been severely hampered had the vehicle made a full plunge to the rocks below.

Inside was the body of the still unnamed Syrian national, whose full details are to be made public once his family are informed of the tragedy. The victim is thought to have been married to a Maltese woman.

Preliminary investigations showed evident signs of violence to the head of the deceased, which have led investigators to treat the case as a homicide.

Criminal investigations – led by Inspectors Christopher Pullicino and John Charles Ellul and Superintendents Pierre Calleja and Antonello Grech – are currently under way, as are attempts to contact the victim’s family.

An autopsy will be held today, in order, among other matters, to confirm the cause of death and the weapon used in the suspected murder.

The victim, police said yesterday, had been in Malta for at least the last six years, and he did not have a police record.

While obviously reluctant to reveal details of their line of questioning, police yesterday said they were “pursuing every avenue” in their investigation.

The case is the second murder investigation this year, the first being the still-unsolved murder brought to light by the recovery of the body of a 25-year-old Russian woman, Larissa Safronova, from the sea in March.