Six female migrants trapped inside a refrigerated food truck were rescued by French police after one of the women was able to make contact with a reporter, the BBC and French authorities said Thursday.

The women — four Vietnamese and two Iraqis — hid for hours in a truck loaded with boxes of bananas in northern France, believing the vehicle was on its way to the U.K. or Ireland.

When they realized that the truck was going in the wrong direction, they started to panic in the cold and cramped, dark space. One of them managed to reach a reporter with the BBC’s Vietnamese service in London who helped the women alert French police Wednesday.

French prosecutor Laetitia Francart said the truck driver, who was in fact heading for Italy, was not at fault. The women told investigators that the driver wasn’t involved, “saying that they climbed aboard the truck thinking they were going to England because of the Irish registration plates,” Francart said in a statement.

“After several hours on the road without a stop, they realized their mistake and alerted a journalist,” she added.

The BBC reporter said she didn’t know the migrants, but suggested she was contacted because of her reporting on Vietnamese migrants who suffocated in a truck four years earlier.

The broadcaster reported that the woman was able to send text messages, the truck’s GPS location and short videos showing the conditions inside the truck. The women were shown sitting in a tight space on the floor, surrounded by boxes of fruit, panicking and struggling to breathe, according to the BBC.

The truck was just 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit) inside, said Francart, Villefranche-sur-Saône’s prosecutor. The women were all wearing thick coats and had no health problems, she said.

French police soon tracked them down and intercepted the truck on a highway, the broadcaster said. Francart said the driver also called police after hearing noise coming from his trailer.

French prosecutor Laetitia Francart said the truck driver, who was in fact heading for Italy, was not at fault. The women told investigators that the driver wasn’t involved, “saying that they climbed aboard the truck thinking they were going to England because of the Irish registration plates,” Francart said in a statement. AP