Two more people have been arrested over the deaths of 39 people found in a truck in Essex.

A man and a woman, both aged 38 and from Warrington, Cheshire, have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people, police said.

Detectives have also been given an extra 24 hours to quiz Mo Robinson, a 25-year-old truck driver from Northern Ireland.

He was detained after the grim discovery in the back of his refrigerated truck at the Waterglade Industrial estate on Wednesday morning.

Post mortems have now begun on the victims – 31 men and eight women who are all from China.

The police investigation is Britain’s largest murder probe since the 2005 London suicide bombings.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson described Wednesday’s discovery as an ‘unimaginable tragedy’.

Questions have been raised about when the victims entered the refrigerated trailer, where temperatures can be as low as -25C.

Mr Robinson is believed to have driven the tractor unit – the front part – from Northern Ireland over the weekend and collected the trailer late on Tuesday night.

Detectives say the trailer travelled from Zebrugge, Belgium, into the Essex port of Purfleet.

It then docked in the Thurrock area at around 12.30am local time on Wednesday and stopped for around 35 minutes.

CCTV footage shows Mr Robinson driving into the industrial estate at 1.10am and the ambulance service alerted the police around half an hour later.

The origin of the container before it got to Zebrugge is not known but it is registered in the port city of Varna, Bulgaria, to an Irish company.

Officials in Belgium said it was unlikely the victims were loaded into the container at Zebrugge, raising the prospect that they were inside in horrendous conditions for days.

Police have not confirmed whether the driver raised the alarm after finding the victims, one of whom is believed to be a teenager.

Reports suggest he passed out at the scene after making the grim discovery and his supporters have set up petitions online calling for his release.

People living close to Purfleet said illegal migrants were a familiar sight.

Janet Lilley, 61, said the area was a ‘magnet’ adding: ‘People would come strolling out of the docks, get in the vans and that’s it, they drive off.’

Lee Tubby, 45, who lives opposite the port, said he has seen people ‘climbing out the top and out the back’ of lorries and cutting the plastic roof covering to climb through.

‘We’ve had people just come out of the port knocking on the door asking for shoes, asking for water,’ he said.

The victims could have been trafficked by a Snakehead gang.

Mike Gradwell, a former Lancashire Police detective superintendent who worked on the probe into the Morecambe Bay cockling tragedy in which 23 Chinese illegal immigrants drowned, told BBC Breakfast: ‘These are criminal travel agents really – you go to a Snakehead to say you want to be trafficked to an economic opportunity and usually you’ll borrow quite a significant amount of money.’

Irish company Global Trailer Rentals Ltd (GTR) confirmed it owned the refrigerated part of the lorry and a spokesman said the company was ‘shellshocked’ and ‘gutted’ by the news.

The firm said the trailer had been leased on October 15 from its rentals yard in Co Monaghan, in the Republic of Ireland, at a rate of 275 euro (£237) a week.

It said it provided police with information about the person and company that leased the trailer, as well as offering to make tracking data available.

Three addresses have been searched in Northern Ireland as part of the probe, while warrants were also carried out in Cheshire.

China has called for joint efforts to counter human smuggling, while vigils have been held in London and Belfast to pay tribute to the victims.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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