British police find 39 dead in truck container, arrest driver – World

British police on Wednesday found the bodies of 39 people inside a truck that are believed to have come from Bulgaria in an industrial estate east of London, and said they had arrested the driver on suspicion of murder.

The discovery was made in the first hours after emergency services were alerted to people in the truck's container, at a sandy industrial site in Grays, about 20 miles from central London.

The truck is believed to have entered Britain in Holyhead, a North Wales port that is an important entry point for Irish traffic on Saturday and originally began its journey in Bulgaria, police said. The truck driver, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, was in custody.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was horrified.

"I receive periodic updates and the Interior Ministry will work closely with the Essex police while we establish exactly what happened," Johnson said on Twitter. "My thoughts are with all those who lost their lives and their loved ones."

All those in the container, 38 adults and a teenager, were pronounced dead at the scene after emergency services were called to Waterglade Industrial Park, not far from the docks on the River Thames.

The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm at this stage if the truck had begun its journey from the country.

"We are still verifying the information, published in the British media and communicating with the authorities," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tsvetana Krasteva.

On Wednesday, police officers with forensic suits inspected a large white container in a red truck next to the warehouses on the site. The police had closed the surrounding area of ​​the industrial estate with large green barriers while conducting their investigation.

"At this stage, we have not identified where the victims are or their identities and we anticipate that this could be a lengthy process," Deputy Police Chief of Essex, Agent Pippa Mills, told reporters. "This is an absolute tragedy."

Mills said finding out who the victims were was his top priority, while a key line of investigation was to determine the route of the truck from Bulgaria to Ireland and then to Britain.

Nearby companies said they had not been able to access their units on the site due to the large police cordon.

"The police arrived at night, they have closed the entire area," said a worker at a nearby cafe, who refused to give his name.

For years, illegal immigrants have tried to reach Britain hiding in the back of trucks, often seeking to reach the United Kingdom from the European continent.

In the biggest tragedy of illegal immigrants from Britain in 2000, British customs officials found the bodies of 58 Chinese in a tomato truck in the southern port of Dover.