Snakehead gang 'behind cockle picker deaths'

Police today are investigating whether the criminal Snakehead network was the force behind the cockle pickers swept to their deaths on the Lancashire coast.

Detectives say they have uncovered "links" between the 19 labourers killed in Morecambe Bay and the notorious Chinese people-trafficking gang.

Two of the alleged senior figures in the cockle picking operation were arrested late last night in Merseyside. There is no suggestion they are linked to the Snakeheads.

They gave themselves up to detectives rather than be arrested in front of their families at their homes in Merseyside. A police officer said: "They are big names in the industry. They have substantial Merseyside properties and are, we believe, superintendents of the organisation."

Five others - described as "foot soldiers or sergeants" - have already been held.

Two of them, an English man and woman, were hiding in a barn near the shore during the rescue.

The woman is understood to have sent the cocklers out onto the sandbanks while the man was their driver. All are being held on suspicion of manslaughter.

Meanwhile, as more than 150 cockle pickers returned to work in the treacherous bay today, some families of the dead were just learning their fate.

Shanghai newspapers reported that the youngest victim, a girl, was only 15, while one of the survivors was a female student.

The longest any of them had been in Britain was six months.

One relative said that last year her family had borrowed almost £20,000 from a loan shark so her brother could be taken illegally into the UK to pick cockles.