54 Burmese job seekers suffocate in Ranong

An additional 47 workers survived the incident late Wednesday and alerted police.Twenty-one were hospitalized while the rest were detained for questioning.

When police arrived at the scene, they found that 54 of the Burmese were already dead in the packed container truck.

Of the victims, 37 were women and 17 were men.

Police were searching for the truck's driver, who had fled the scene, and members of the smuggling gang they believed arranged the trip.

Police blamed the driver for failing to turn on the air conditioning in the back of the truck.

The surviving workers told police they sneaked into Ranong province from Burma's Victoria Point by fishing boat Wednesday night and were then packed into a small container truck for a trip to Phuket.

But after two hours, the workers told police that many of them began falling sick because of poor ventilation in the truck.

The Burmese knocked to signal the driver about the problems, he stopped the vehicle, discovered the bodies and fled.

A local villager who found the truck alerted police at about 10pm.