February 16, 2005
by Kevin Caruso
An international forensic team working on identifying over 4,000 victims of the Thailand tsunami will need up to six more months to complete their work.
The team, which consists of over 20 national police forces and bases it work at the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification Center in Phuket, Thailand, is using dental records, fingerprints, and DNA to try to determine the identity of the victims. They began work
on January 13th and have identified 338 victims to date.
The Thai government believes that about half of unidentified bodies are those of Thai citizens and the other half are those of tourists.
Police believe that some of the bodies may never be identified.
