L’achat du logiciel ADN est aujourd’hui financé par les américains et les européens et va donc permettre de faire la comparaison entre les données post mortem et les données collectées sur les membres des familles.

  Les corps qui étaient sur la zone 1 (près de Khao-Lak donc) vont être rapatriés sur la zone 2 (aéroport de Phuket) où les équipes étrangères travaillent dans un site mieux équipé de surcroît.

  Entre ces deux sites, ce seraient donc 3090 corps qu’ils resteraient à identifier.

« The government has signed a US$1.6 million contract with a US company for highly specialised computer software to facilitate identification of tsunami victims.

Under the deal, the Gene Code forensic DNA matching software company will help analyse forensic data from foreigners killed in the disaster, Pol Gen Nopadol Somboonsap, a legal adviser to the force, said yesterday.

Financial support for the project was coming from the United States and European countries.

Victims’ information would be filed in the system and then matched against samples sent by relatives, Pol Gen Nopadol said.

The company previously processed the identification database of victims of the World Trade Center bombing in 2001.

Pol Gen Nopadol said that he would ask the national police chief for more forensic staff to help at the victim identification centre in Phuket, to speed up the process and send the bodies back to their home countries.

The ID centre had sent five refrigerated containers to Bang Muang and Yan Yao temples in Phangnga’s Takua Pa district to replace those which had broken down.

However, the bodies there might have to be transferred to the Phuket victim identification centre, which was better able to handle such a large number of bodies, he said.

There were currently 788 bodies at Yan Yao and 750 bodies at Bang Muang being processed by the Central Institute of Forensic Science, Pol Gen Nopadol said.

The victim identification centre in Phuket, run by the Police Forensic Institute, had 1,552 bodies”. (ONNUCHA HUTASINGH)