Two truck drivers from Northern Ireland have been charged with people-smuggling after 35 Afghan Sikhs, one of them dead, were found in a shipping container at an English port, police said on Saturday.

The two men, who were arrested on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, were due in court on Saturday to face charges of conspiring to facilitate illegal entry into Britain. One of the men turned himself in to police.

Workers at Tilbury docks, east of London, discovered the migrants on August 16 in an unloaded container after hearing bangs and screams from within. The container had come from Zeebrugge, Belgium.

One Afghan man, Meet Singh Kapoor, aged 40, was found dead. He had been traveling with his two children, aged nine and 12.

The survivors, aged between one and 72, told a translator they had fled Kabul in Afghanistan because of religious persecution. All were suffering severe dehydration and hypothermia after being in the container for 18 hours.

Sikhs form a tiny minority in Afghanistan.

tj/kb (AP, AFP)