Thai rescuers with industrial-scale pumps started to drain a lagoon in this tsunami-hit fishing village on Wednesday, where they fear the bodies of scores of missing victims may be lying. Nobody knows how many people were killed in the village by the giant Dec. 26 waves, which lay waste to the sleepy community of maybe as many as 5,000 people. The village was also home to an estimated 1,000 illegal immigrants from neighbouring Myanmar, who have either died or been deported, locals say. “Many, many Myanmar people died,” said one female survivor, coming back to survey the wreckage of what was once her home. “Those who got into their boats survived, those who tried to run died.” Fishing villages just across the border in Myanmar were relatively unscathed, according to the United Nations World Food Programme, whose assessment team in the country says the military government’s figure of 59 deaths was fairly accurate. Sokit Plikthong, 28, a shrimp farmer who lost her mother and daughter, said Thai authorities had sent the immigrants back to Myanmar two days after the disaster. “I don’t know where they are now,” she said. More than 5,200 people died and 8,500 were injured in Thailand as an undersea earthquake off Indonesia triggered giant waves that tore into coastal communities around the Indian Ocean. Rescuers have given up the search for bodies, apart from the lakes, focusing instead on rebuilding a village reduced to rubble by the waves. “We’ve stopped searching for people. They are probably under the rubble and impossible to find,” said Nukul Hokhua, a volunteer. “We’re now just clearing up. If we find them, we find them.” Naval engineers with two huge cranes have started to retrieve the 30-tonne wooden fishing boats which were scattered like driftwood throughout the back streets. Remarkably, nearly half of the 23 fishing boats in the village appear to be undamaged. “It is a very difficult job because many of the boats are on top of the houses,” said Captain Surapong. In the middle of the village, among the worst hit of all the communities along Thailand’s western shores, rescuers fear the lagoon, now a cesspit measuring more than 100 metres (yards) across, will soon reveal its grim contents. “I know we will find bodies. There are probably cars and trucks down the bottom of the lakes and people still inside,” said pump operator Chaiwat Petsiri.

<B>Ed Cropley</B>