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Rohingya woman dies in truck travelling from Phang Nga

Rohingya woman dies in truck travelling from Phang Nga

A Rohingya woman has died after suffocating in a truck packed with migrants from the Myanmar Muslim minority group as they travelled through southern Thailand, police said toady (January 12).


By AFP

Monday 12 January 2015 02:16 PM


A boat carrying Seventy-four Rohingya stopped at Rawai, Phuket on New Years Eve 2013 looking for supplies

A boat carrying Seventy-four Rohingya stopped at Rawai, Phuket on New Years Eve 2013 looking for supplies

Authorities found five pickup trucks carrying nearly 100 Rohingya before dawn on Sunday in the Hua Sai district of Nakhon Si Thammarat province on the Gulf of Thailand.

"There were total 98 Rohingya. Of them, one woman aged around 20 years old died from suffocation while travelling," provincial police commander Kiattipong Khawsamang told AFP.

"The truck was crowded and she also had not eaten," Kiattipong said, adding the group was travelling from Phang Nga province on the western seaboard.

Two of the pickup drivers have been arrested on suspicion of people-trafficking, he added.

Thai authorities will now process the group to establish whether they were being trafficked by smugglers through Thailand.

Authorities have in recent weeks discovered scores of other migrants who fled dire conditions in Myanmar, taking advantage of the slightly calmer winter waters in the Andaman Sea to head south.

On January 5 police detained 53 migrants from Myanmar -- the majority of them Rohingya -- in Phang Nga province, a hub for boatpeople being transported on to mainly Muslim Malaysia.

Thousands of Rohingya have fled deadly communal unrest in Myanmar's Rakhine state since 2012.

AFP