Request For Timber To Prepare Foreigner Coffins

Request for timber to prepare coffins for foreigners

BANGKOK: -- The relatively small size of standard Thai coffins has resulted in urgent appeals for donations of timber to ensure that the foreign victims of Sunday's tsunami receive adequate burial.

Group Capt. Sithichai Kaeowbuadee, assistant to the secretary-general of the Air Force disaster prevention centre, called today for donations of formalin, shrouds, body bags and coffins to cope with the huge number of corpses still piling up along the Andaman coast.

However, he noted that while members of the public had already donated a large number of coffins, most of these were not large enough to cope with foreigners.

Today an Air Force plane from Thailand's southern province of Krabi took 26 more survivors to Bangkok for medical treatment.

Of these, 25 were Swedish, and five had to be carried on stretchers.

Another plane from Phuket carried 130 people with minor injuries.

Group Capt. Sithichai said that eight more Air Force planes would take more survivors to Bangkok later today.

--TNA 2004-12-29