Belgian police looking for driver of stowaways

Thirty-five people from Afghanistan, including a man who later died, were discovered in a container at Tilbury Docks in the UK on Saturday. The container came from the port of Zeebrugge in Belgium.

Peter De Waele, spokesperson for the Belgian Federal Police, said investigators were "very hopeful" of tracking down the driver of the vehicle that dropped the container at Zeebrugge port.

“It is possible that the victims were already on the container before it was dropped off in Zeebrugge because it’d be rather impossible to put 35 people in that container once at the port," he told the Press Association.

The fact that the container with 35 stowaways inside was not noticed before leaving the port of Zeebrugge is not surprising, according to the maritime police. Their cargo scanner, which is used to detect stowaways in containers, is faulty.

"Moreover, we have to contend with massive staff shortages,” claim the maritime police. "We’re lucky if we can check 50 containers per day, while there are easily around 5,000 containers passing through here daily.”