Police
suspect victims were beaten, drowned; children among
dead
Police yesterday launched an
investigation into the brutal killings of 13 people -
including five children and some with heavily bruised
bodies - who were found in rice sacks on a waste site in
Muang district.
Police rushed to scene after being
alerted by a local villager.
Provincial deputy police commander Pol
Col Pinit Satcharoen said that some of the victims had
broken necks and severe bruises, while others appeared
to have drowned.
Their clothes were still wet and their
bodies bore no trace of gunshot or knife wounds, Pinit
said, adding that some were also suspected of having
been poisoned.
The victims were a man, seven women,
three boys and two girls. They were believed to have
been dead for at least eight hours but less than 24
hours before being discovered, Pinit said.
The rice sacks containing the bodies
were dumped under sacks of fertiliser and animal waste.
"We are still looking for more
evidence at the scene," Pinit said.
Police found tyre track traces near
the scene, leading them to believe the victims were
murdered elsewhere and moved to the site by truck before
being dumped.
Police suspect those killed were
Burmese immigrants as they wore longyi -Burmese sarongs.
A note written in Burmese and Burmese bank notes were
found among the bodies.
Several local villagers told police
that the dead were possibly workers from a nearby
construction site.
Police said they were transporting the
bodies to the Police Hospital in Bangkok for autopsies.
Prachin Buri Governor, Chaijit
Rattakajorn, said the sacks were produced in Samut
Prakan and were imprinted with a logo from the Krungthep
Animal Food Co.
The murders come at a time when the
government is trying to encourage employers of Burmese
workers to join a registration programme, allowing the
government to better ascertain the number of Burmese
workers in Thailand.
Deputy Prime Minister and Defence
Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh said he believed the
victims were Burmese nationals working illegally in
Thailand.
Last month, 20 corpses, believed to be
of ethnic Burmese, were found floating downstream in a
river along the Thai-Burmese border in Tak's Mae Sot
district.
Last October, the Labour ministry
registered around 560,000 of an estimated two million
illegal workers in an effort to control the flow.
