PEDANG BESAR, Thailand (Reuters) – Dozens of police and volunteers have exhumed 26 bodies at a mass grave near a suspected human trafficking camp on a hillside deep in a southern Thai jungle, police said yesterday.
The digging site, in Sadao district in Songkhla province, yielded five bodies on Friday and 21 more yesterday, all believed to be migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh. Authorities found three survivors at the camp, two of them children.
“A total of 26 bodies were uncovered – 24 men, one woman and one unknown,” said Police General Jarumporn Suramanee, adding the operation was now completed. There had been estimates of up to 30 bodies buried at the site. Illegal migrants, many of them Rohingya Muslims from western Myanmar and Bangladesh, brave often perilous journeys by sea to escape religious and ethnic persecution and to seek jobs in Malaysia and Thailand, a regional trafficking hub.
