DNA tests needed to identify Thai school fire victims

BANGKOK (AP) — Relatives of a dozen primary-school girls who died in a dormitory fire in northern Thailand are awaiting the results of DNA tests, because all but five of the bodies were too disfigured to be identified by sight.

Fifteen girls and a teacher escaped the fire Sunday night by tying bedsheets together and using them to climb down from a second-floor window at the dormitory at the Pithakkaiat Witthaya school outside Chiang Rai city.