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Thailand exhumes bodies for DNA tests
Eileen Ng
Posted Tue, 11 Jan 2005
Thailand continued the grisly task on Tuesday of exhuming tsunami victims for DNA testing to try to confirm the identities of all more than 5300 people killed, nearly half of them foreign holidaymakers, in the December 26 disaster.
Authorities repeated assurances that all the bodies they had of tsunami victims, including some which had already been buried, would be DNA tested amid fears that people have been buried without proper identification.
Some bodies have also been cremated but only after being positively identified.
A disaster victim identification centre meanwhile opened on the resort island of Phuket to begin matching DNA data.
The interior ministry announced in a daily update Tuesday that it had 5309 people confirmed dead, including 1728 Thais, 1240 foreigners and 2341 bodies that could not be identified by nationality.
The number of missing was put at 3370, including 1102 foreigners.
Many of those missing would likely be confirmed dead in time, Interior Minister Bhokin Balakula said.
The final death toll may change slightly, "But if we match the DNA tests of the dead and their relatives, we will likely find that the missing people are the unidentified dead," he said.
Thailand at the weekend made a dramatic 10-fold increase in the number of corpses listed as having unknown national origin, saying that initial identifications had proved unreliable.
AFP
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