Wang Kelian, Malaysia - Malaysian police Thursday removed the remains of nine people from jungle camps near the Thai border where an estimated 139 bodies are believed to have been buried in a still unfolding people-smuggling crisis in Southeast Asia.
The skeletal remains were carried in white cloth bags tied to wooden poles to the border town Wang Kelian on the eve of an international meeting in Thailand on the desperate situation of refugees and migrants fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Some of the bags clearly showed human contours. A Malaysian police statement said Thursday's recovery brought the total number of remains removed from the camps to 13 persons who would undergo post-mortem examination by pathologists.
The abandoned sites in Malaysian territory were discovered on the weekend after the massive scale of human smuggling was exposed by a Thai crackdown on trafficking networks, which has left thousands of desperate people stranded at sea on rickety boats.
"Based on the size of the graves, and after the area was cleared... we have a clearer indication -- single grave, single person," Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said in Wang Kelian.
Malaysia previously said it had discovered 139 grave sites. When asked by AFP if he now believed there were 139 bodies in total, Wan Junaidi said: "Yes."
Thailand is hosting a regional meeting on Friday to address the crisis, which has seen more than 3,500 Bangladeshi economic migrants and stateless Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar arrive on Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian soil.
Thai authorities acted after discovering some 33 bodies in mass graves in camps in the country's south.
"This is not only Malaysia's problem, (it is) an international problem as people come from Bangladesh and Myanmar," Wan Junaidi said.
"It is ASEAN's problem," he added, referring to the Southeast Asian grouping that includes Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand.
Officials said a Malaysian rescue force of six ships and a helicopter carrying humanitarian supplies on Thursday spotted two boats suspected to be carrying more than 40 Rohingya off the resort island of Langkawi. But the boats were in Thai waters and avoided contact with the Malaysian flotilla.
AFP
