Refugees call police from inside container at Zeebrugge

Seven Iranian migrants who were being trafficked in a container truck telephoned the police in Zeebrugge from inside the container, after they started to run out of oxygen, the prosecutor’s office in Bruges said.

The seven were being transported from Iran by human traffickers. They were headed for the United Kingdom via sea transport from Zeebrugge. The truck in which they were travelling was carrying crates of wine.

The container had been disengaged from the truck and was waiting on the dockside when the men, otherwise in good health, began to notice a lack of oxygen. It is likely that they had not been in the container for the whole journey; many human traffickers load passengers into lorries in lorry parks along the roads of West Flanders for the last leg of their passage to the UK.

Recent weeks and months have seen a sharp increase in the numbers of migrants trying to get to the UK through Zeebrugge’s port (pictured). Belgium’s criminal code was recently amended to make any unauthorised entry to a port an offence. Both the lorry parks and the port of Zeebrugge are subject to regular police surveillance to combat human trafficking.

Photo: Simon Blackley/Flickr Commons