VIETNAMESE Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has sent a message of condolences to the families of victims and requested sending ministerial working groups immediately to Britain following news of the Essex lorry victims being Vietnamese nationals.

Phuc was briefed about the information from the British side by the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs while attending the 35th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and related meetings in Bangkok, Thailand, according to the statement released yesterday on the Vietnamese Government portal.

The prime minister directed the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to immediately send delegations led by leaders of the ministries to Britain to work with British authorities to handle related work.

Police in the U.K.’s Essex County believe 39 people found dead in a refrigerated container truck in the county last month are Vietnamese nationals.

U.K. police initially believed all of the dead persons found in Essex were Chinese nationals, but retracted it later.

“At this time, we believe the victims are Vietnamese nationals, and we are in contact with the Vietnamese Government. We are in direct contact with a number of families in Vietnam and the U.K., and we believe we have identified families for some of the victims whose journey ended in tragedy on our shores,” Essex police’s assistant chief Tim Smith, who is in overall charge of the investigation into the deaths of 39 men and women discovered at Grays, Essex, on Oct. 23, said in a statement released by the Essex police Friday night.

This evidence is being gathered across a number of jurisdictions worldwide and as a result, Essex police cannot at this time announce the identity of any of the victims but they will continue to “cooperate closely” with the Vietnamese Government, and others, to identify the victims, it said.

They continue to appeal to anyone who has information that may assist them in their process to identify the victims to make contacts.

On Friday, police in Vietnam’s central province of Ha Tinh said they had arrested two persons following 10 families reporting their children going missing in the U.K. after the 39 victim tragedy. Ha Tinh police have summoned a number of individuals for questioning and determined that they’re not only involved in the 10 families’ cases but also in other trafficking incidents that have occurred over the past few years. (SD-Xinhua)