300 bodies to be exumed

Mislabeled bodies exhumed
03/01/2005 20:55 - (SA)

Phuket - Forensic experts have begun exhuming 300 tsunami victims in
Thailand after learning their bodies were apparently mislabeled in the
rush to bury the dead before they decomposed in the tropical heat,
officials said on Monday.

Thai government officials and police urged friends and relatives
seeking information about the missing to stay away from the disaster
area and temporary morgues so forensics experts could do their jobs.

"Relatives want to come here, but we would like them to stay in their
home countries and collect information on medical and dental records,"
foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai said, referring the bereaved to
a website with information on the missing.

More than 200 forensic experts from Thailand and 18 other countries are
working frantically at Buddhist temples - serving as makeshift morgues
- to identify the dead, many of them foreign tourists.

At one morgue, several hundred bodies lay on the ground, covered by
tarps or body bags. Another hundred lay in the sun. A man sprayed a
cloud of disinfectant.

Some beaches, least affected by the walls of water that battered a long
stretch of the country's southern coast on December 26, have already
been largely cleaned up. Tourists were swimming and sunning themselves.

With 5 187 confirmed deaths and 3 810 people still listed as missing,
Thailand's official death toll could be as high as 8 000, prime
minister Thaksin Shinawatra has warned. The total number of people
killed in 11 nations was expected to exceed 150 000.

Situation 'quite severe'

With Thaksin saying on Sunday that Thailand no longer needs financial
assistance, the focus was on finding and identifying bodies, along with
maintaining the flow of aid and finding longer-term housing for those
who lost their homes.

Heavy machinery worked on the ruins of posh resorts that were flattened
around Khao Lak beach, about 80km north of Phuket, where Thaksin said
the situation remained "quite severe". Elephants helped clear debris.

Leading Thai forensic expert Porntip Rojanasunand said 300 victims, all
Thais and other Asians, were being exhumed.

"When the relatives came to try to claim the victims' bodies, it turned
out they had the wrong number," she said. "The local offices did not
put tags on the bodies properly, so we are trying to re-identify them.
No one understood how important it is to have the appropriate tagging
and labelling. The last two days, we have had the problem of digging up
bodies."

In one case, a Thai family admitted it had mistakenly claimed the body
of a woman that was brought from Phuket to Bangkok. It turned out to be
the body of a 23-year-old Philippine choreographer and ballet dance
instructor.

Foreigners' bodies are kept in air-conditioned containers, while those
of Thais are temporarily buried in nearby cemeteries, waiting for
relatives to retrieve them for cremation. Some are being packed in dry
ice to slow down decomposition in the tropical heat.