18 stowaways found in truck at Rotterdam port

The Koninklijke Marechaussee found 18 stowaways in the back of a truck at the Europoort in the port of Rotterdam on Saturday night. Seven of the stowaways were children between the ages of 1 and 15 years, the Marechassee said on Facebook.

The Marechaussee, a policing force that works as part of the Dutch military and is responsible for border security, found the people hiding behind a double wall in the truck's cargo hold. According to the Marechaussee, it involves several families, believed to be from India.

The truck driver, a 51-year-old man from Bulgaria, was arrested for human trafficking.

Last year 1,371 people were arrested after being found hiding in trailers, trucks or containers at the Port of Rotterdam, compared to 944 in 2017. Port authorities find stowaways almost every day.

Just last week 18 people, including 5 children, were found hidden in a "tiny, extremely hot space" between a load of tires in a small truck at Hoek van Holland. They were also from India. And end May police discovered 14 people hidden in the back of a truck at the port. Ten of them had been deported after they were found inside a different truck just two weeks before. The men and boys in were from the Palestinian territories, Syria, and Yemen.