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Thai police chief insists country is safe for tourists

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Thailand’s most senior police official has insisted his country is safe for tourists despite the failure to catch or even identify the killers of British backpackers David Miller and Hannah Witheridge.

“It is safe. I’m sure it is safe,” Police General Somyot Poompanmoung, the Royal Thai Police Commissioner, told the Telegraph during a visit to Koh Tao island where the Britons’ bodies were found last Monday.

However, he admitted he still had no clear picture of what happened to them in the hours before their deaths. “We have to wait.”

Asked if police were close to catch the killers he said: “I hope so.”

Police now believe that a gang of at least three “attackers”, two of whom are Asian, was responsible for the killings.

The badly disfigured bodies of Mr Miller, 24, and Ms Witheridge, 23, were found on Koh Tao’s Sairee beach in the early hours of last Monday.

The pair had met on the island and had been staying in the same hotel.

Tourist police chief Atichai Ti-amart said investigators were also now searching for a “foreign” woman who was seen near the crime scene on Koh Tao island’s Sairee beach in the early hours of Monday.

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