Eight Iraqis saved from refrigerated truck in Spain

MADRID: Eight Iraqis, including four children, were found crammed inside a refrigerated truck in a service area in eastern Spain, police said on Saturday, adding that they had been trying to reach Britain.

The four adults and four children, aged two, five, eight, and 10, were all in good health, Spanish police told AFP on Saturday.

"After we received an anonymous call on Friday, agents from the Spanish police opened the back of a refrigerated truck in a lay-by on the A23 motorway and found eight Iraqis inside, all in perfect health," police said.

None of the migrants carried identification, but police said they were able to determine that all were Iraqi nationals.

The occupants included one family of two adults and three children, another family of a woman with a two-year-old daughter, and a man travelling alone.

It wasn’t immediately clear how long they had spent inside the truck, but police said they were on their way to Britain when their truck was intercepted in the eastern province of Teruel. "We do not know yet how these Iraqi families came to be in Spain," police said.  The driver, a 37-year-old Romanian national, was arrested on charges of human trafficking.