Vietnam team in UK to identify Essex lorry victims

A Vietnamese delegation was working with British authorities to identify the 39 people who were found dead inside a refrigerated lorry container in the UK's Essex county on october 23, as many of the victims were believed to be Vietnamese, a Minister said here on Monday.

The delegation arrived in Britain on Sunday and will send the first report home on Monday afternoon at the earliest, Xinhua news agency quoted the Minister of Public Security To Lam as saying.

The delegation has taken "a lot of verified documents related to local families reporting their relatives missing for cross-checking with the British side".

Once the victims' identities were confirmed, the Ministry will focus on citizen protection measures, cooperating with other government agencies to repatriate the bodies.

At the same time, it will continue investigation to bring those responsible for this incident to justice, Lam added.

So far, the Ministry has directed the filing of criminal charges and arrested a number of people related to the organising and brokering of illegal immigration.

On Sunday, Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh chaired a meeting over the deaths, requesting relevant ministries and agencies to continue coordinating closely with the British side to identify the victims, in order to release official information on the case.

It was reported at the meeting that a delegation from the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had also left for Britain.

Initially, police in Essex said the victims, 31 men and eight women, were Chinese, but a number of Vietnamese families have described how they fear their loved ones are among the dead.IANS