Though both from the same region in Turkey, the Kalendergill and the Guler families had never met before Tuesday, December 4th. At some stage that day both families, along with five other people, clambered into the back of a freight container, bound, they thought, for England.

These two young families, both from the dusty, mainly Kurdish Kahramanmaras region of south-east Turkey, had made very different journeys over the previous week. Like thousands of Turkish Kurds before them, their plan was to start anew, their intended destination - Dover, England.

The plan was to enter a freight container somewhere between the Grood Bigeaarean truck park, just outside Brussels, and the enormous international port at Zeebrugge in Belgium.

The truck they all climbed into was being driven by a man named by Belgian police only as Johan S. Whether they gained entry to it at Grood Bigeaarean, when Johan S had stopped for a sleep shortly after midnight on Monday, or at Zeebrugge itself, it was easy to break the seal and hide among the office furniture.

They had no reason at that point to doubt it was going to England given that an address in England was taped to a number of the boxes inside.

Karedede Guler (32) and his young wife, Sariye (28) were probably trying to settle their young sons, Iman (9) and Berkan (3) after getting in. The boys were no doubt tired after the long journey, which had been under way for over a week.

Hasan Kalendergill (42) and his wife Kadriye (36) had sold everything, including their small house in the city of Elbistan in Kahramanmaras, to bring their 16-year-old son, Kalender, and 10-year-old daughter, Zelide, on the mainly overland journey. They had been travelling for up to a month.

With them in the 40-foot metal container were three other Turkish nationals, as well as one man from Algeria and another from Albania.

Mustafa Demir (23) was originally from Gazi-Antep, a city near the Syrian border and about 70 km south of Kahramanamaras. A trainee hotel manager, he had travelled to Germany some time beforehand and had been staying with his older brother, Zuhtu (28).

The brothers met up at a food market in Frankfurt on Monday morning. They said their goodbyes during the 10-minute meeting and Mustafa promised to ring his brother on Wednesday to let him know he had arrived in London safely.

Yuksel Ucaroglu (23), a butcher, was also from Gazi-Antep. He is thought to have left the city over a month ago for a gruelling land and sea journey as far as Zebrugge.

Little is known about the other travellers, ironically perhaps because they survived the trip. They are still recovering in Wexford General Hospital and the garda∅ are reluctant to release any details about them.

The Guler family, though originally from the Kahramanmaras region, moved some years ago to Istanbul. Karedede was working in the construction industry there when he and his young family last saw their British relatives, when they visited Turkey late last year.

One of Saniye's three sisters, Fatma, had married Iman Iyuguven, also from the Kahramanmaras region in 1978, and they moved to England in 1992.

Members of the Kurdish community, they were granted political asylum and settled in Islington in north London. Saniye and Karedede planned to bring their young family to start a new life, with their in-laws in London.

It appears they entered Europe legally, using visas. Neither Britain nor Ireland is party to the particular EU agreement under which the visas were granted, and so they would have to enter England covertly.

They flew from Istanbul to Spain, probably around Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th November. They travelled, on public transport, through Spain and France, making for Calais. It is thought they arrived there on Thursday 29th or Friday 30th, November.

Their plan was to make it across the channel - either by hiding on a Eurostar train, or hiding themselves in a freight container. By either means, their intention was to reach the south coast of England, just 31 miles away, via the Channel Tunnel.

They ran into problems, however, and were forced give up that option.

Their next move was to contact known people-smugglers in Belgium, who they knew could get them to Dover by ferry.

They probably got to Brussels by train, by Saturday, December 1st, making contact with the smugglers that weekend. Garda∅ say they paid about £1,000 each.

It is thought Karedede and Saniye, and the two young boys were directed to a safe house, where they probably got some rest before the final leg of their journey early the following week.

The Kalendergills, according to sources in London, sold everything in Elbistan and set off about a month ago.

It is likely they travelled to either Istanbul or Ankara, an overland journey of between a day and a day-and-a-half. Less is known about this family's route, but according to relatives they reached Belgium via Bosnia, Italy, Switzerland and Germany.

They had a choice of means of getting to Bosnia.

One of the most traversed, though dangerous, routes starts at the busy Kucuk Pazar, on Istanbul's teeming waterfront.

As one source put it: "There are so many hundreds of ships coming in and out of Istanbul every day it's easy to slip onto one of the ships that stops off in Greece."

Or they may have paid up to $600 a head for a ride from Istanbul to the 80-mile Turkish-Greek border, where they could cross into Greece on a small boat.

From Greece they would have travelled north, probably hidden on a lorry, through Albania and into Bosnia.

Or, like up to 28,000 other Turks and Kurds a year, they might have flown on the daily flight from Ankara to one of Bosnia's two main airports, bearing return tickets they had no intention of using.

According to a relative who spoke to The Irish Times this week, they made contact with smugglers there and agreed to pay about $7,000 in total for the trip to England. Some of the money was paid in Bosnia, with an agreement to pay the balance in Belgium and England.

From Bosnia they could have been brought through the northern cities of Tuzla and Bihac, over the border into Croatia and then either overland or over the Adriatic, and through the poorly patrolled Italian border.

It is not known at what point they entered the P&O freight container, but they could have entered it, or begun travelling with it, as early as Friday, November 30th, when it was loaded with office furniture in a Milan warehouse.

The container was put on a train and arrived in Cologne on Sunday. From there, lorry driver Johan S drove the container to Zeebrugge, stopping off at 12.04 a.m. on Tuesday December 4th, at the Grood Bigeaarean truck park to rest.

It is known that at least one of the 13 stowaways, an Albanian, was picked up at the New Bristol hotel in Brussels. Some of the others, including the Gulers, may also have gathered there on Monday evening, to be driven out to either Grood Bigeaarean or Zeebrugge.

They were all clearly helped. Bolt cutters were used to open the container doors, which were sealed with quick-drying silicone. It is not clear whether the container was opened once, and all stowaways entered at the same time, or whether they entered at different points on the journey from Italy.

What is clear is that all 13 understood they were going to Dover and that they'd get out of the container later on Tuesday night. They were, they thought, almost home and dry.

However, as one relative put it this week, "somewhere along the line they got mixed up or got into the wrong container".

Instead of the short cross-channel journey they faced a 53-hour journey, through a force 10 gale, to Waterford.

The container had four small air vents of six inches by three. One or more of the stowaways had an acute respiratory infection, which, according to the State Pathologist, Prof John Harbison this week, would have spread quickly in the confined space.

As oxygen depleted, according to a relative, the stowaways began to fall into a coma within a matter of hours. He said one of them tried to draw attention to their plight by banging the inside of the container.

However, it was stored deep in the ship's hold, far away from any crew who might have heard the noise.

The ship arrived at Belview Port in Waterford at 11 p.m. on Thursday, December 6th, where it was unloaded and stored. Given that no sound was heard from within, it is likely a number of its occupants had already died and that all had fallen, at least, into a coma.

At 8 a.m. on Saturday, December 8th, the container was picked up for the 40-mile journey to Drinagh Business Park in Wexford.

By the time it was opened, with the assistance of garda∅, eight of the 13 occupants were dead.

Kadriye Kalendergill lost her husband, Hasan, and her two children, Kalender and Zelide. Karedede Guler lost his wife, Saniye and their two children, Iman and Berkan. The two other Turks, also thought to be Kurds, Mustafa Demir and Yuksel Ucaoglu, were also dead.

They had all died of lack of oxygen, aggravated by the acute respiratory infection.

By the time they were discovered relatives in England and Germany were frantically calling police and port authorities. Their loved ones had not made contact as expected on the night of Tuesday, December 5th, and as they heard of the unfolding tragedy in Wexford, they feared the worst.

Within hours, relatives were on their way from London and by Monday evening a distant relative of the Kalendergill family, a Kurd, arrived from Cork.

He identified "all of the Turkish people" on the container as Kurds, an assertion apparently backed up by the arrival in Wexford on Wednesday night of Ms Arzu Pesman, general secretary of the Federation of Kurdish Communities in Britain. She visited each of the Turkish nationals in hospital.

An estimated 700,000 Kurds live throughout Europe, the majority having fled persecution in Turkey, Iran and Iraq, where they are denied cultural rights.

Asked why his family had left their homes to make the tortuous journey across Europe, the relative said: "They were brave, or maybe stupid, but if you were in a hopeless situation it is amazing the things you will go through. But that is the drama of our people.

"And the European Union may make all the laws to try and stop this smuggling of people. But as long as they do not speak up to solve the reasons my people are leaving their homeland, this will happen again."

Breda O'Brien: Page 14

Anyone wishing to make a donation to help pay for the welfare of the survivors may do so via the TBS Wexford branch. Account number: 990639-71978767; or through the chaplain's office at Wexford General Hospital.