BANGKOK, Jan 10 (AFP) - Thailand, which has undertaken a massive effort to double check the nationalities of thousands of tsunami victims, on Monday revised slightly downward its confirmed death toll to 5,303.
Two deaths had been reported twice, causing the small drop from Sunday's toll, the interior ministry's disaster prevention unit said.
Among the dead, 1,790 were believed to be Thai and 1,354 foreigners, with the rest of undetermined nationality, officials said.
But with 3,396 people still reported missing more than two weeks after the tsunami, the death toll could still rise. Foreigners account for 1,102 of the missing, according to the latest tally.
Thailand on Sunday made a dramatic 10-fold increase in the number of corpses listed as having unknown national origin, saying that initial identifications had proved unreliable.
A disaster management official told AFP that bodies now listed as Thai or foreign had been identified by relatives or by DNA testing that matched the victim to a relative.
"At first, everything was confused because we were trying to work as quickly as possible, so we divided them only as Thais and foreigners," the official said.
"But now everything is more organized, and we realized that some of the people initially thought to be Thai might have been from other Asian countries," the official said.
"The bodies we are not sure about will be put on the unidentified list" until forensic experts finish their work, the official added.
As an extra precaution, an official in the Phang Nga provincial rescue office said DNA tests would now be performed on every corpse, including hundreds already buried, to ensure they were identified correctly.
"All bodies who were not DNA tested will be unearthed so DNA samples can be taken and microchips will be implanted to identify who they were," the official said.
The process could take months as experts sift through thousands of pieces of data. People who report a missing relative must give a DNA sample that experts then will match to DNA from the victims.
01/10/2005 03:57 GMT - AFP