Police identifying 39 bodies in lorry

POL ICE have beg u n the process of trying to identify 39 bodies found in a lorry on an industrial estate in Essex.

Detectives now say the refrigerated trailer containing the victims arrived at Purfleet from Zeebrugge, i n Belgium, at around 12.30am yesterday, while the front section known as the tractor came from Northern Ireland.

The lorry and trailer left the port shortly after 1.05am and officers were called around 30 minutes later after ambulance staff made the grim discovery at Waterglade Industrial Park, on Eastern Avenue, Grays.

The vehicle driver, named i n reports as 25-year-old Mo Robinson from Portadown i n Co Armagh,

Northern Ireland, is being held by Essex police on suspicion of murder.

Police searched two addresses in Co Armagh last night as part of the investigation.

Deputy Chief Constable Pippa Mills said: “In order to ensure we maintain the dignity of the people who sadly lost their lives, we will be moving the lorry and trailer shortly.”

She said they were being moved to nearby Tilbury Docks so the bodies can be recovered while preserving the dignity of the victims.

“We are yet to identify them and must manage this sensitively with their families,” she added.

The prime minister said the perpetrators of the crime “should be hunted down”.

Police have said tracking route used “will be a key line of inquiry”.

A spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said Brussels had started an investigation into the incident.

The Bulgarian ministry of foreign affairs said the truck was registered in Varna in Bulgaria “under the name of a company owned by an Irish citizen”.

Police first thought the lorry had travelled to the UK through Holyhead in north Wales on October 19 but later revealed that the trailer had come directly from the Continent.