更新：英國警方週四表示，39名死者據信均為中國公民，其中8人為女性，31人為男性。
Essex lorry deaths: Work starts to identify 39 bodies
Tricky task of catching the people smugglers
Since the Calais migrant camps were shut three years ago and security measures were increased at Dover and the Channel Tunnel, people smugglers have increasingly moved to other routes.
Asked which ports are being used, the National Crime Agency told me: "All of them."
More dangerous methods are being used to get human cargo through.
The most common one is being hidden in the back of a lorry, but increasingly commercial shipping containers are being used, sometimes even refrigerated ones of the type seen on the back of the truck in Essex.
Risks are substantial for the migrants, who can pay £10,000 or more for a space on these vehicles.
Read more: Tricky task of catching the people smugglers
How many migrants have died in transit?
The number of migrants who die in transit has been recorded by the UN since 2014.
Since then, five bodies of suspected migrants have been found in lorries or containers in the UK:
- 2014: An Afghan migrant was found dead at Tilbury Docks, Essex. He was in a shipping container, with 34 Afghans who survived
- 2015: Two migrants were found dead in a wooden crate in a warehouse in Branston, Staffordshire. The crate had been sent from Italy
- 2016: An 18-year-old migrant was crushed while clinging to the underside of a lorry in Banbury, Oxfordshire
- 2016: A body was found in the back of a lorry in Kent, which had travelled from France
Data was not collected in the same way before the migrant crisis began in 2014, but such deaths are not new.
In 2000, 58 Chinese migrants were found suffocated to death in a lorry at Dover.
In 2015, the bodies of 71 people were found in an abandoned lorry on an Austrian motorway. Police suspected the vehicle was part of a Bulgarian-Hungarian human trafficking operation.
Essex Police has set up a casualty bureau for anyone concerned about relatives to call.
The British Red Cross has confirmed staff and volunteers were helping "those dealing with this terrible tragedy".
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