Police in Songkhla on Saturday rescued 20 scared and hungry people from Myanmar, victims of traffickers who’d locked them inside a border warehouse.
Residents told police they’d heard the sound of children crying for several days in the usually deserted warehouse in Sadao district.
Pol General Suchart Thirasawat, an inspector-general in charge of an anti-trafficking unit, led the rescue operation on Saturday night.
“We found the building heavily locked from outside and could we hear women and children crying inside,” he said.
The locks were soon broken open, revealing the migrants sitting in the dark without windows or electricity.
There were five children, the youngest a toddler, and nine adult men and six women.
“All of them were glad to see us,” Suchart said.
They told their rescuers they’d been locked up for five days without food, surviving only on rainwater trickling in.
It appears they were smuggled in from Myanmar and were destined for Malaysia.
Suchart vowed to catch the traffickers.
