Unknown tsunami victims buried

AUTHORITIES yesterday began burying Thailand’s last 110 unidentified victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, a little more than two weeks before the disaster’s second anniversary.

Workers carried the bodies out of the mortuary where they had been kept, then lowered them into concrete vaults in trenches at a special new cemetery.

The cemetery is near the resort town of Khao Lak in Phang Nga province, which was the area in Thailand most affected by the tsunami. It will be inaugurated on December 26 to mark the disaster’s anniversary.

Buddhist, Muslim and Christian ceremonies were conducted before the burials.

Most of the unidentified victims were Asian, many of them thought to be migrant workers from Myanmar.