BANGKOK
Thai police say two migrant workers from Myanmar have confessed to killing two British tourists earlier this month.
Police General Somyot Pumpuanmuang told the Anadolu Agency on Friday that the DNA results from the men also matched those found on the female victim.
Three migrant workers were in custody in connection to the murders, but only two had confessed, he added.
The two will be taken to the scene of the crime later in the day to reenact the killings.
Two British tourists, a 24-year-old male and a 23-year-old female, were found bludgeoned to death on a beach in Koh Tao island, off the coast of southern Thailand, on September 15.
An autopsy revealed the woman had been raped. Investigators said a blood stained hoe and the clothes of the two victims were found nearby, adding that a party is understood to have been held in the area the night before, about 100 meters from where the bodies were found.
Police will now present their findings to the judicial system and seek an arrest warrant for the detained suspects.
Although tourist murders are rare in Thailand - an extremely popular tourist destination - two Thai men raped and killed a 21-year-old British tourist on a beach in the nearby island of Koh Samui - Koh Tao's larger cousin - in January 2006.
In 2007, two young female tourists were murdered on a beach in Pattaya on the country’s eastern seaboard and in January 2009 a German woman was killed by a Thai man on Koh Phang-ngan - an island in the south famous for its "Full-moon parties." In May of the same year, a Swiss woman was robbed and strangled on a beach in Krabi province.
To safeguard travellers, the Thai junta - which seized power May 22 - has launched women-and children-only carriages on main routes on the country's rail network nationwide after a 13-year-old girl was raped and killed in her berth on an overnight train in July.
A Thai court sentenced a former railway worker – who police said was drunk and on drugs during the attack - to death Tuesday after convicting him of murder and concealing the girl’s body to hide the cause of death.
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