Thai agencies squabble over victim identification

Senior Thai officials squabbled today over who should conduct forensic identification of thousands of victims from last month’s tsunami disaster, in a quarrel that could delay the process of handing over bodies to grieving relatives.

The killer waves on December 26 killed about 5,300 people in Thailand, and left another 3,600 people missing. Among the victims were hundreds of foreign tourists, and some of their governments have expressed concern that Thai methods of identifying the corpses were not following internationally-accepted standards.