British police discovered dozens of bodies in a truck container on Wednesday. The background is little known one day after the discovery, the police have taken murders. According to British media, there were first raids during the night.
Accordingly, two homes in Northern Ireland have been searched - the country of origin of the truck driver. A connection with the case is strong, it was said. According to reports, people in the cargo hold could be frozen to death because the large truck semi-trailer was a refrigerated container.
In the video: 39 corpses discovered in a truck in Essex
AP
According to the police, the unidentified dead are 38 adults and a teenager. So far, there are indications that these are migrant workers. Up to now, this has been officially confirmed as well as the cause of death. It is also unclear whether the truck driver arrested on suspicion of murder ever knew that the people were in the trailer.
According to police, the trailer had been transported by ship from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge in the English Purfleet and arrived there early Wednesday morning. Purfleet is a short distance from the village in the industrial area of Grays, where the container was finally discovered.
Who alerts rescue workers is unknown
According to previous investigations, the container was apparently shipped half an hour past midnight (local time) from the ship ashore and there coupled to the - apparently from Northern Ireland - tractor unit. The team left the harbor shortly after 1 o'clock. Paramedics had finally informed the police about 1:40 clock on the body finding in the truck, it said. Who had alerted the emergency services, is not known.
The truck was registered since 2007 in the Bulgarian port of Varna on the Black Sea, as Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissow said. Since then, the vehicle has not been in the country. According to a Bulgarian freight association, this is not uncommon for tax reasons.
The cadaver reminiscent of similar cases: In 2000, British customs officials in Dover found the bodies of 58 Chinese in a tomato van. The case is considered the heaviest refugee tragedy in the UK. Three years ago, on the way to Germany, 71 refugees died in a refrigerated truck in Austria. The parked truck with the bodies of the refugees was found on 27 August 2015 on a highway in Austria.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed dismay after the find in Essex. On Twitter, he wrote that he was "horrified by the tragic incident in Essex" and expressed his condolences to the relatives of the dead. The Chancellor also expressed her sympathy. Angela Merkel was deeply shocked by the painful death of the people, said government spokesman Steffen Seibert.