LONDON, Jan 31: British police said on Thursday they had smashed a people-smuggling ring that specialised in illegally trafficking Chinese nationals to Britain on a massive scale.

Officers arrested 13 people in dawn raids at 11 addresses across London and another in west central England. They found 23 illegal immigrants at one address in south London.

Most of the suspects were thought to belong to a gang of Turkish people smugglers and were either Turkish nationals or had Turkish origins.

The operation followed similar raids by police in Belgium and France in the past few weeks, Scotland Yard said in a statement.

“We have today dismantled two organised criminal networks involved in what is suspected to be large-scale human smuggling into the United Kingdom,” said Detective Superintendent Steve Richardson.

“We are committed to taking out these networks and this operation is the latest in our collaboration with a growing number of law enforcement agencies in Europe and the UK to work robustly to achieve this mission.” The Turkish gang was allegedly responsible for the final leg of a journey that would take Chinese nationals mainly from the south-east of the country up to 18 months to complete, officers said.

Each person would pay up to $41,800 to be taken across Asia and western Europe to Britain. The traffickers are also suspected of involvement in drug smuggling and money laundering.

Tony Smith, the regional director of the Border and Immigration Agency, said some 18,000 potential illegal migrants were stopped every year, including as many as 13,000 concealed in lorries at major ports, particularly Calais.—AFP