Belgian police are searching for a driver who had carried a 39-person container to Zeebrugge before it was taken to the ferry to England.

Belgian police are focusing on the driver of the container ship to the port of Zeebrugge and using video from surveillance cameras to identify the person, according to the Times.

The driver is said to have bypassed the usual procedures when arriving at the port, failing to report his identity or bill of lading, the type of proof that he was hired by the transport company.

"We hope to catch him soon. His truck was recorded 10 times in surveillance cameras at the port," the Dutch newspaper Het Nieuwsblad quoted a Belgian official as saying.

C.RO, the port management company Zeebrugge, is believed to have handed over the videos to police and this is an important development that can reveal who is behind the journey of 39 ill-fated people in container trucks. .

Earlier police said the container arrived at Zeebrugge port at 14h39 on October 22, before being put on a ferry across the sea to the Port of Purfleet, Essex County, England at 1am on October 23. At Purlfeet port, it was received and transported by Mo Robinson tractor driver, at 1:40 pm, 31 men and 8 women were found dead in the container. Robinson, 25, was arrested along with three others on charges of human trafficking and manslaughter.

The container is owned by GTR Europe in Dublin, Ireland, and leased to another business. According to GPS location data, the container left Ireland on October 15, passed the UK and then crossed the sea to France and Belgium. From October 17 to October 22, it traveled between England and the European continent twice.

The fact that the driver of a container carrying 39 people arrived at Zeebrugge has raised questions about security at European ports. Speaking on the evening of October 25, a Belgian police said that 4,000 trucks and containers pass Zeebrugge every day without camera recognition and that migrants are often hidden in containers to escape through the UK. He added that migrants were often taken by traffickers into trucks from Germany and Luxembourg before leaving for England.

The Port of Zeebrugge said it has deployed sniffing dogs and thermal sensors to detect people in containers, but the devices have no effect on frozen containers.

Journey of the container carrying 39 bodies before being discovered. Graphics: Tien Thanh

An anonymous source told the Mirror that when opening the container door, emergency responders were shocked to see "dozens of bodies on top of each other". The victims may have died about 3-4 hours ago. . They also discovered blood around several bodies and on container floors.

"There were blood fingerprints along the door, they probably banged here for help. The victims wore little clothes," the source added. Police and medical personnel at the scene said that apart from the victims, there were no goods in the conntainer.

The Essex County Police initially believed that the victims, including 31 men and 8 women, were Chinese, but authorities were investigating whether the victims were of a different nationality. Vietnamese officials also collaborated with the UK to verify the citizenship. The autopsy and victim identification process has begun but it is expected to take a long time.