Thailand is going back to the beginning in the arduous task of putting names to the more than 2,000 unidentified people killed by the Indian Ocean tsunami, including exhuming hundreds of bodies, officials said yesterday. Two weeks after catastrophe struck, the bodies, many probably of foreign tourists, are to be re-examined to ensure all the information which might identify them was known and catalogued, they said.

The re-examination required the exhumation of more than 600 bodies buried hastily in the initial onslaught facing rescue workers, the officials said. Even the most basic identification of many corpses as Thai or foreigner needed to be checked again

Of the 2,159 unidentified people, 1,974 died in the coastal province of Phang Nga where the tsunami crumpled hotels on Khao Lak beach packed with foreign tourists and left an as yet unknown number dead in a fishing village of several thousand people.

A senior official at the national disaster centre on Phuket island, just off Phang Nga, said the race of the dead had often been decided visually. ?From now on, when we say we can identify them, we must know their names and have some sort of document to verify their identification,? said the official, who requested anonymity.

The official death toll remains at 5,303 ? including 1,790 Thais and 1,354 foreigners who have been positively identified ? with another 3,396 still missing, most of them presumed dead. Interior Minister Bhokin Bhalakula told reporters DNA tests would be carried out on all the unidentified bodies in hopes a match could be found from close relatives.

Foreigners who believe relatives are among the dead, have been asked to hand over DNA samples to police in their own countries for dispatch to Thailand for matching with samples from bodies. Thais will do the same, Bhokin said. Forensic workers from more than 20 countries are working to identify bodies, with those believed to be of foreigners kept in refrigerated containers. The process is likely to take weeks, even months.

?It has taken so much time and will take quite some time for those bodies being re-checked?, said Chailert Pinyorattanchote, a senior Phang Nga official. ?Many corpses, which have gone through DNA collections, had to be checked again because the code numbers we wrote on them were erased by some antiseptic. Then the process had to start from the beginning again,? he said.