The police in Britain said the identification of the victims and verification of their nationalities would take some time, but the dearth of information has not stopped some Vietnamese from mourning victims they believe were once part of their community.

The Rev. Anthony Dang Huu Nam, a Catholic priest in the remote town of Yen Thanh in Vietnam’s northern-central Nghe An Province, told the Reuters news agency that many residents feared that relatives who had left home to find better lives abroad may be among the dead.

“The whole district is covered in sorrow,” Father Nam was quoted as saying. Prayers for the dead could be heard over loudspeakers throughout the town on Saturday, Reuters reported.

The rights activist Hoa Nghiem has said that the family of one Vietnamese woman, Pham Thi Tra My, 26, feared she might have been in the trailer. Vietnam’s embassy in London also said it was working with the British authorities after receiving requests for help from some Vietnamese families in verifying whether their relatives were among the victims.

Even as Detective Chief Inspector Martin Pasmore told reporters on Saturday that the police could not definitively confirm the victims’ nationalities, the department said it was undertaking “the largest mass fatality victim identification process” in its history in order to put names to those found in the tractor-trailer.

All the bodies were moved from the truck at Tilbury Docks to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford for autopsies, the police said.

A Vietnamese community group called Viethome said on its Facebook page that it had been in contact with the British police to pass on 20 photographs that families had provided to help in the process. But the Essex Police did not immediately confirm having received the images.