BANGKOK: -- At least 54 Burmese migrant workers suffocated as they were being smuggled into Thailand inside a cold storage container.

Another 21 were seriously injured, police said.

The victims were among 121 people crammed inside the container that was 6m long and only 2.2m wide, said Colonel Kraithong Chanthongbai, commander of the local police station in the southern border province of Ranong where the bodies were found.

The airtight container was normally used to carry frozen seafood.

But the migrants were trying to enter Thailand by hiding inside the container which was travelling across the border, he said.

The migrants were supposed to pay a Thai smuggling ring 5000 baht ($170) each to transport them from the Burma-Thai border in Ranong to the nearby resort isle of Phuket, he said.

Once there, they hoped to find work as day labourers, he said.

When the man driving the truck carrying the container realised some of the migrants had died, he parked on the side of a road, opened the door to the container, and fled.

"The people said they tried to bang on the walls of the container to tell the driver they were dying, but he told them to shut up as police would hear them when they crossed through checkpoints inside Thailand," he said.

The 46 people who survived without injury had been arrested.

-- AFP 2008-04-10