LONDON: Authorities have found some 68 migrants crammed in a shipping container at a port northeast of London.
The service says the migrants were feeling faint and were suffering from abdominal and chest pains. Seven people, including two pregnant women, were taken to the hospital.
The service said in a statement Friday that the remaining migrants were turned over to U.K. border authorities.
Officials told media that the migrants included 35 Afghans, 22 Chinese, 10 Vietnamese and a Russian national.
A vast tide of thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East, fleeing the wars and poverty in their home nations, have washed ashore in Europe in recent months, mostly aboard rickety vessels set adrift by human smugglers in the Mediterranean.
Southern European nations have felt the brunt of the desperate influx, with the shores of Italy and Greece seeing almost daily arrivals or rescues at sea.
The migrants who reach those nations often hope to carry on to eventually reach Britain or other northern European nations where they’ve been told work is more readily available.
Friday’s case was the first in recent history of a large number of migrants arriving in Britain via shipping container.
