Victims of killer waves unidentified

Four years after the disastrous tsunami struck there have been some blessings in disguise - the number of Scandinavian tourists has increased - but also some lingering sorrow.

On the negative side there are still 54 Burmese migrants unaccounted for and almost 400 unidentified bodies of tsunami victims, the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification and Repatriation Centre in Phangnga said ahead of the fourth anniversary of the tsunami on Friday.

Centre director Nitinai Sornsongkram said 388 bodies of tsunami victims remain unidentified. The centre received 3,696 bodies in February, 2005, and 3,308 were identified and retrieved by their relatives, he said.

He said agency workers are still trying to identify the bodies and return them to their families.

At present, 445 have been reported missing by their relatives. Of these, 290 are Thais, 95 are Burmese migrant workers and 60 are Scandinavians.

ndonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand were all hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which was triggered by an earthquake registering nine on the Richter scale.v

More than 5,000 people, mostly international tourists on holiday, were killed when the killer waves struck Thailand's six Andaman coastal provinces.

Swedish ambassador Lennart Linner said Swedes were still very grateful to the Thai people for all the help they gave after the killer waves struck.

''You helped us before you helped yourselves,'' he said.

Returning Swedes talk very warmly about the assistance they received from individual Thais, but speak less warmly about the helping hand offered by Swedish officials.

Sweden, with a population of nine million, was one of the countries with the highest per capita death toll from the tsunami _ a total of 544 Swedes died, while more than 20,000 were holidaying in Thailand when the disaster struck.

Now the number of Swedish tourists in Thailand has doubled four years later, ambassador Linner said.

Surprisingly, the number of Swedish tourists has not dropped, but increased from 230,000 visitors a year to close to 400,000