One of the young teenagers who died in a refrigerated lorry in England last month had run away from a secure unit for vulnerable refugees in the Netherlands, the AD has reported

In total, 39 people, all Vietnamese, died in the lorry which was found in an industrial area in Essex. The container they were hiding in had arrived in England from Zeebrugge in Belgium the previous day. ­­

The AD reported earlier that six Vietnamese youngsters had run away from the care facility on August 16 but the Dutch refugee settlement agency COA will not say if the youngster was one of these six. ‘But it goes without saying this is a major tragedy,’ a spokesman told the paper.

In April, Dutch MPs called for a full investigation after it emerged over 1,000 refugee children, mostly teenagers disappeared from protected refugee centres in the Netherlands between 2013 and 2017.

The figures came from research by radio programme Argos which has been looking into the trafficking of young refugees, particularly those of Vietnamese origin.

Over the past five years, at least 60 Vietnamese children have vanished without trace from the protected housing where they lived in the Netherlands because of fears they were at risk of being trafficked, Argos said.

Nail salons

The Argos investigation, a joint probe with Britain’s Observer newspaper, said officials fear most of them end up in the UK working on cannabis plantations and in nail salons.

In one case, a 17-year-old Vietnamese boy managed to seek the help of British police after being brought into the country from a refugee centre in the south of the Netherlands.

In the late 2000s, over 100 Nigerian girls disappeared from Dutch refugee centres, several of whom were later found in Italian brothels.