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Belgian prosecutor: many questions over deaths of 39 Chinese

Belgian prosecutor: many questions over deaths of 39 Chinese (24 Oct 2019) A spokesperson for the Belgian federal prosecutor's offices said it still has a lot of questions concerning what happened in the country before the bodies of 39 people were found in a container truck in Essex, England.

The Belgian federal prosecutor's office said earlier on Thursday that it was clear the container had come through the North Sea port of Zeebrugge.

But Eric Van Duyse said his office  "don't even know which road was followed by the truck in Belgium."

He added that Belgian and British authorities are cooperating together during the investigation.

In an earlier statement, the prosecutor's office said the container arrived in Zeebrugge on October 22 at 2:49 pm local time (1249 GMT), and "left the port the same day in the afternoon."

Cooling containers often move swiftly through Zeebrugge, often just with a visual check, for the short crossing to England.

UK authorities have warned for several years that people smugglers are turning to Dutch and Belgian ports because of increased security on the busiest trade route between Calais in France and Dover in England.

Britain's National Crime Agency warned in 2016 that people smuggling using containers on ferries was "the highest-priority organised immigration crime threat."

The same year, the UK Border Force identified Zeebrugge and the Hook of Holland in the Netherlands as key launching points for people trafficking into Britain.



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