A team of specially trained police officers is waiting anxiously to interview the two survivors who hold vital clues to the origins of the journey which led 58 suspected illegal immigrants to death in Dover on Sunday night.
Fifty-four men and four women died "a most terrible death" on the hottest day of the year in an airtight 18metre-long container which had its refrigeration unit switched off.
The two survivors were moved to secure police accommodation last night under guard.
An interpreter who saw them earlier at Kent and Canterbury Hospital said they were still too traumatised to be interviewed. Badly dehydrated and barely able to speak, they had indicated that they had tried without success to escape.
Police meanwhile were awaiting the results of the first two post-mortems before confirming the nationalities of the deceased, although spokesmen for the National Criminal Intelligence Service earlier said the tragedy fitted the profile of a Chinese smuggling operation.
The Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said they were the victims of organised crime, whose deaths should serve as a "stark warning" to others tempted to put their fate in the hands of organised traffickers.
Speaking at the EU summit in Portugal, the Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, echoed Mr Straw's call for a Europe-wide strategy to counter what the Home Secretary called "a profoundly evil trade" in people.
While the security services, MI5 and MI6 would lead the hunt for the traffickers, another Home Office minister, Mr Charles Clark, told Channel 4 News: "The one positive thing to come out of this tragedy will be a greater focus throughout the world on tackling these organised gangs."
Mr Straw wants a common European policy which would see asylum-seekers held closer to their countries of origin while their claims are processed.
In the Commons yesterday he said the Dover tragedy was the result of the "irrational" system which prevented them applying for asylum without breaking the law.
He hoped one beneficial outcome would be greater understanding by some countries in Asia "that they have to be really serious about helping countries in Western Europe deal with this traffic".
But Mr Mark Lattimer of Amnesty International said the tragedy showed the desperate measures those seeking safety were willing to take.
"Rather than ensuring an efficient system which quickly and fairly identifies those with a well-founded fear of persecution, successive British governments have focused on stopping asylum-seekers reaching Britain," he said.