FIVE would-be illegal immigrants have been caught stowed away on a lorry bound for Yeovil.

The two women and a man from Vietnam and two men from Iraq were discovered by a sniffer dog at 3.20am on Thursday, August 12, at the port of Calais in France.

The German-registered home removals vehicle was carrying furniture to an address in Yeovil.

The stowaways were all handed over to French Border Police and the vehicle was allowed to continue its journey, but both the German driver and the haulage company will be fined if they are unable to prove they took the correct steps to secure the vehicle.

Carole Upshall, the UK Border Agency's head of European Operations, said: "This is exactly why we base so many of our staff in France and Belgium – to stop illegal immigrants before they can reach the UK. As well as using sniffer dogs our staff also have heartbeat detectors, scanners and carbon dioxide probes to detect the presence of people hiding in lorries."