British police on Thursday said that 39 people found dead in a truck near London are believed to be Chinese nationals, in a case that has triggered national outrage over the people-trafficking business.
Emergency workers discovered the bodies on Wednesday inside the refrigerated container of a truck parked in an industrial area east of London, shortly after it had arrived on a ferry from Belgium.
Police are conducting the country’s largest murder probe in more than a decade into what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described as an “unimaginable tragedy.”
Photo: AP
The local police force, who have arrested the truck’s driver on suspicion of murder, said eight of the dead were women and 31 were men.
“All are believed to be Chinese nationals,” Essex Police said in a statement.
However, the Chinese embassy in London said yesterday that British police had yet to confirm their nationality, a day after a consular official traveled to Essex.
An embassy spokesperson earlier said that Chinese authorities had read the reports with a “heavy heart” and were in close contact with police “to seek clarification and confirmation.”
The deaths echoed the discovery of 58 Chinese immigrants hidden in a Dutch truck in the English port of Dover in 2000. Only two survived.
“It [has] happened elsewhere, but it makes you more shocked that it could happen in your area,” said May Lovett, a 33-year-old owner of a cafe by the local docks.
“I don’t know how people can be so evil,” said Rashda Imran, a mother who has lived in the area for 18 years.
In China, the news had gathered more than 870 million views online by yesterday morning, with more than 165,000 comments.
“No matter what nationality they are, it’s a tragedy,” one comment said.
With the help of immigration officials and the British National Crime Agency, Essex Police are leading the biggest murder probe in Britain since the 2005 London terror attacks, which killed 52 people.
Its officers searched three properties in Northern Ireland overnight in connection with the investigation.
The addresses are believed to be linked to the arrested truck driver, a 25-year-old man from the province, who police had remanded in custody until yesterday.
Police said a coroner would try to establish the cause of death of the 39 people, before investigators then attempt to identify each individual.
The container section of the articulated truck came by ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge into Purfleet on the River Thames estuary — a crossing that takes nine to 12 hours.
Prosecutors in Belgium have launched their own probe and on Thursday confirmed that the container had on Tuesday passed through Zeebrugge, one of the world’s busiest ports for cargo on trucks.
“It is not yet clear when the victims were placed in the container and whether this happened in Belgium,” the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said.
Essex Police said that the tractor unit of the truck entered Britain on Sunday on a ferry from Dublin to the Welsh port of Holyhead.
They had earlier said they believed the tractor unit originated in Northern Ireland.
The vehicle had license plates issued in Bulgaria after it was registered there in 2017 by an Irish citizen, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said.
The unit had not entered Bulgarian territory since and there was “no connection with us,” Borisov said.
In another incident on Wednesday, police in Kent in southeast England said they had discovered nine people stowed away inside another truck, after stopping the vehicle on a motorway.
They were handed over to immigration officials.
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