A MAN has been found shot dead inside a Brit tradesman’s van carrying ten illegal migrants at a French motorway rest stop.

The vehicle was found at a stop around 20 miles north of the city of Troyes and 200 miles away from the Channel crossing.

The body of a 47-year-old man was found with a “gunshot wound to his head” inside the van at around 5am on Friday.

A suspect “believed to have been present at the crime scene” was arrested after the shocking discovery, Troyes prosecutor Isabelle Verissimo said.

The van had UK licence plates, however the driver’s nationality has not yet been revealed.

Cops also found “around 10 foreign nationals who were irregularly on French territory,” inside the vehicle.

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An initial investigation suggested that shots were fired into the van as it stopped to park at the Champ l’Epée rest stop.

Several people then fled the scene, according to Verissimo.

She said that a criminal investigation would be opened today for murder, attempted murder, and unauthorised possession of a weapon.

The probe will also look into “aiding the irregular entry, the movement and the residence of a foreigner in France as part of an organised group, and human trafficking as part of an organised group”.

The A26 motorway runs over 220 miles, from Troyes to Calais and is known in France as the “motorway of the English” (Autoroute des Anglais) because it is always full of people travelling to and from Britain.

Last year, the RAID – an elite French special forces unit – was involved in a deadly shoot-out with Iraqi-Kurd pople smugglers at a motorway service rest area on the A31, near Dijon.

It emerged at the time that Karzan Ghazi Kareem, 39, was blasted to death during the gun fight in February 2025.

His brother, 45-year-old Idriss Ghazi Kareem was an English Channel migrant “super smuggler” who organised small boat crossings worth £50million a year from prison, investigators revealed.

Idriss Ghazi Kareem is currently serving a 15-year sentence for the manslaughter of seven Afghans who drowned on the way to the UK. (The Sun UK)