A plot to smuggle 25 illegal immigrants into Sussex ended in failure yesterday after a police chase.

The 22 men and three women were spotted jumping from the back of a lorry minutes after it left Newhaven port.

Officers with tracker dogs and helicopter support teams were sent to the town's industrial estate after being tipped off by a factory employee.

The stowaways, thought to have paid £1,300 to organised criminals to be brought in from Serbia, made off in a bid to escape capture.

They fled across fields and marshland but were rounded up shortly afterwards when the Sussex Police helicopter spotted them and directed officers on the ground to where they were.

The group was intercepted on the A259 coast road near the beach at Tide Mills and taken into custody in a fleet of police vehicles.

One man, aged in his 20s, spoke out before being taken away, saying: "We came with trucks for two weeks from Serbia.

"We gave money to peoples (sic) to come here. It cost 4,000 Deutschmarks.

"We just want to live a peaceful life. We don't have nobody here."

Immigration officials are due to question those detained to discover how they came to be aboard the lorry which had come on a ferry from Dieppe.

The driver was later traced and taken to Eastbourne police station for questioning.

A police spokesman said: "The group were seen jumping from the back of a lorry by an employee at the Parker Pen factory.

"They apparently had no idea of where they were and then ran off across fields. It didn't take long to spot 25 people heading for the beach in this weather."

Sgt John Tickner, of the force helicopter unit, said: "They had stayed together as a group and it was a fairly easy task to spot them from the air.

"We believe they were a mixture of Kosovans speaking Turkish, Serbian and Croatian and they are being taken to the immigration centre at Newhaven for processing."

Sgt Tickner added: "There were no signs of a struggle from the 22 men and three women and all were co-operative."