The Vietnamese Embassy in London is working with British police to verify the nationality of 39 deaths found in a refrigerated truck on October 23 in Essex, the UK. 
The truck containing 39 deaths found in Essex, the UK. Photo: PA
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The embassy also works with Vietnamese and British authorities to speed up the verification and conduct different measures to protect its citizens in case any Vietnamese victims were verified, Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Following the case, both local and foreign media reported there is potentially a Vietnamese woman among 39 deaths.
Pham Thi Tra My, 26, texted her mother “I’m dying because I can’t breathe” among her last messages that her father Pham Van Thin showed local authorities in Can Loc district of Vietnam’s central province of Ha Tinh on October 25.
Thin said that his daughter planned to move to China then to the UK and his family could not contact her some days ago, VnExpress reported.
The family of My released a series of messages she sent at 10:30pm on Tuesday, as the container would have been making the crossing from Zeebrugge in Belgium to Purfleet in Essex
Suspicion of a number of Vietnamese nationals among the victims arose when a number of Vietnamese people reported to local authorities that they have lost contact with their children for several days recently.
On October 25, Bui Chinh asked the authorities in Ha Tinh’s Hong Linh town to check if his 37-year-old son who came to work in the UK is safe as he could not be reached for some days.
Meanwhile, the family of a Vietnamese man, Nguyen Dinh Luong, 20, on October 24 said that they were concerned that he also may have been on the truck as they had not heard from him since [October 22], according to the Telegraph.
One community group in the UK said it had been contacted by at least 10 families, while an NGO based in Vietnam said seven groups of relatives had been in touch in an attempt to discover whether their loved ones were among those who had been locked inside the refrigerated lorry.
It is unclear if there is a crossover between the groups.
Pippa Mills, the deputy chief constable of Essex Police, said that she “would like to speak directly to anyone who thinks their loved ones may have been in the trailer” as she assured them that the police only wanted “to give the victims’ families answers about what has happened”.
When the deaths were found in the truck, initial suspicion was that all the victims are Chinese nationals but the Chinese authorities have not yet confirmed.
