'Nine illegal immigrants' found stowed away in HGV in Kent

Nine suspected illegal immigrants were found hidden in the back of a lorry at a business park.

Police were called to Gillingham business park in Kent at 1.20pm on Friday after receiving reports of people stowed away in a HGV.

The nine were taken to Dover and handed to Home Office immigration officials. It is unclear whether they had crossed the English Channel from the cleared Calais migrant camp known as the Jungle.

Within 10 days last month, French authorities moved nearly 7,000 migrants from countries including Afghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea out of the rat-infested slum to sites around France.

Many had converged at the shanty town in Calais after fleeing poverty, persecution and war in an effort to get smuggled into Britain on freight trucks.

A Kent Police spokesman said: "Kent Police was called to Gillingham business park at 1.20pm on November 11 following a report of concern for individuals located in a lorry.

"It is reported nine people were in the lorry. They were taken to Dover and handed into the care of Home Office Immigration."

Last month in Kent, four suspected illegal immigrants seen disembarking a lorry in Bridge, near Canterbury, were held and handed over to Home Office immigration officials.

On the same day - October 27 - five suspected illegal immigrants were filmed in footage posted online getting out of a HGV near junction 1B of the M25.