Three Vietnamese are among 14 illegal immigrants who hid in a reefer container to enter Ireland.
Apart from the three Vietnamese, 10 of the immigrants are believed to be Kurds from Iran and Iraq while the remaining individual is Turkish.
Local Irish media reported that nine men, three women and two girls were found in the container and all were in good health, although an emergency call to the authorities was made by one of the women who was struggling to breathe.
The reefer box, which was transported on a ferry from Belgium’s Zeebrugge port to Ireland’s Rosslare port, was uncovered around 3 am on 8 January, two hours after a woman inside the container made an emergency call to the UK Coast Guard, which reportedly alerted its Irish counterparts.
When the container was intercepted,
The container had already loaded onto a trailer truck before it was intercepted by the Irish authorities.
During a press briefing on 11 January, Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Pham Thu Hang, said that the Vietnamese embassy in the UK had informed the ministry about the incident and efforts were being made to understand the situation and provide consular assistance.
Recall that in October 2019, 39 Vietnamese were discovered dead inside a container that was already loaded onto a truck in southeast England in an unsuccessful human smuggling operation.
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