At least 78 people were suffocated or crushed to death after being arrested and packed into police trucks after a riot in southern Thailand, officials said Tuesday. The announcement dramatically increased the death toll from the latest eruption of violence in Thailand's Muslim-dominated south to 84. Officials had earlier said that six people were shot to death during clashes Monday at a police station in Narathiwat province. Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunan, a forensics expert who works for the Justice Ministry, told a news conference Tuesday that she and a team of doctors conducted autopsies on 78 bodies at an army camp in Pattani province and found that most of them had perished from suffocation. The dead were among some 1,300 people arrested Monday following the police station riot.
