The bodies of thirty-nine people, including that of a young man, have been found in the container of a truck in Essex, in the United Kingdom on Wednesday. Police were notified by an ambulance service after the bodies were discovered in the Waterglade Industrial Park area in Eastern Avenue, in the town of Grays near the River Thames and about 30 miles from central London.
The driver, a 25-year-old from Northern Ireland, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. No information has been released yet about the nationalities of the deceased or any other.
“This is a tragic incident where a lot of people have lost their lives. We will clarify what has happened and we are in the process of identifying the victims, although that can be a long process,” Essex police detective chief agent Pippa Mills told local media.
“The truck and the trailer will be moved to a safe place in Tilbury Docks, so that the bodies can recover while preserving the dignity of the victims,” Mills said. The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry says that the truck was registered in the Bulgarian port city of Varna, in the Black Sea, by an Irish company. British police now believe that the vehicle could have entered the United Kingdom through Belgium. Investigators point out that the truck travelled from Zeebrugge, Belgium, to the port of Purfleet in eastern England. It then docked at the Thurrock area around 12:30 a.m. local time for about 35 minutes before leaving, Essex police said in a statement.
Initially, the police believed that the truck had entered the UK from Ireland through Holyhead in Wales.
Three years ago in Austria a truck was intercepted with the bodies of 71 Syrian and Iraqi migrants inside. In June of this year, four persons responsible for that human trafficking network were sentenced to life imprisonment in Hungary.
