Fifty-four illegal migrant workers from Myanmar suffocated in the back of an unventilated truck Thursday, while the rest of the passengers being smuggled to Thailand pounded on the container and screamed in vain for the driver's help.More than 100 migrants, mostly women, were about two hours into their trip to the resort island of Phuket late Wednesday when they started collapsing, police and survivors said. At that point, in Ranong province near Myanmar, their ruckus caused the driver to stop. When he unlocked the container and discovered the dead workers, survivors said he ran off.
The victims, along with 67 survivors, had been forced to stand in the 7 foot by 20 foot locked and sweltering container area of the truck, normally used to carry seafood, police and survivors said. Temperatures in the province reached 93 Wednesday.
"I thought everyone was going to die," Saw Win, a 30-year-old survivor, told The Associated Press from police custody. "If the truck had driven for 30 minutes more, I would have died for sure."
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