20 Myanmar migrant workers killed in Thailand bus fire
Bangkok: Twenty migrant workers from Myanmar were killed when their bus caught fire in northwestern Thailand on Friday, the police said.
The workers were travelling to a factory district near Bangkok when their chartered bus was engulfed in flames around 1.30 a.m. in Tak Province, the Bangkok Post reported.
The double-decker bus was carrying 47 Myanmar workers, out of which 27 managed to escape the inferno, said Col. Krissana Pattanacharoen, a Royal Thai Police spokesman.
The cause of the fire was not yet known, he said. Initial reports said that the engine of the bus caught fire which spread quickly through the vehicle.
Police said the fire was so intense that identifying the dead would require experts. One officer at the scene told the daily that he could not distinguish between male and female corpses.
The authorities were planning to interview the driver, who survived the fire.
The workers who were killed on Friday had passed the lengthy new registration process to work in the country, reports said.
Thailand has the world's highest rate of road traffic deaths, according to World Health Organisation data from 2013. In 2015, it was found to have the second highest road fatality rate behind Libya.
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11 more bodies retrieved from Arunachal accident site
Itanagar (PTI): Eleven more bodies were retrieved on Saturday from the deep gorge in Arunachal Pradesh's Anjaw district, where a mini-truck on which 22 labourers from Assam were travelling fell, an official said.
With this, 17 bodies have been recovered from the accident site, Anjaw's deputy commissioner Milo Kojin said.
He said three more bodies will be brought out on Sunday.
The operation, being conducted by a joint team of the NDRF and Army, resumed at 6 am.
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"The retrieval process was extremely difficult because of the treacherous terrain, and the gorge is very deep," Kojin said.
The operation was suspended around 4 pm due to low visibility and will be resumed on Sunday morning, he said.
"One person is still missing, and a search operation will be carried out tomorrow," he added.
The accident happened on the evening of December 8, around 40 km from Hayuliang towards Chaglagam in the district. On the evening of December 10, one survivor managed to climb out of the gorge and reach a nearby Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) labour camp, following which the authorities were alerted.
Six bodies were recovered from the gorge on Friday and handed over to their families on Saturday.
