54 Myanmar workers suffocate in back of truck in Thailand

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Fifty-four migrant workers from Myanmar, most of them women, suffocated in the back of a seafood truck in southern Thailand while being smuggled to the popular resort island of Phuket, police said Thursday. The victims, along with 47 survivors, were crammed tightly into the truck's sweltering container and were about two hours into their trip late Wednesday in Ranong province near Myanmar when some of them started dying, police Col. Kraithong Chanthongbai said. Survivors pounded on the walls to get the attention of the driver, who stopped the truck and opened the back but then fled, Kraithong said. Of the dead, 37 were women and 17 were men.