The badly decayed remains of at least three more migrants thought to be from Myanmar or Bangladesh have been exhumed from a mass grave in southern Thailand.
As details emerged of the maltreatment endured at the remote people smugglers' camp, forensic teams dug out the latest skeletons from shallow graves covered by bamboo and about a metre of dirt at the abandoned jungle camp in Songkhla province.
Authorities have found the remains of least eight people since Friday's grim discovery of the site, a find that has again laid bare Thailand's central role in a regional human trafficking trade.
Police are investigating more than 20 other apparent graves in the area, which is a few hundred metres from the border with Malaysia.
Two survivors - men aged 25 and 35 - told doctors they had spent months at the camp despite falling sick and having little to eat.
"Both are malnourished, have scabies and lice," doctor Kwanwilai Chotpitchayanku told AFP at Padang Besar hospital.
"The older man could not walk, he had to be carried off the mountain. He hadn't eaten anything for two days before he was found. He told the translator he had a fever in the jungle for two months."
Doctors said the men had not been fully identified but were from either Bangladesh or Myanmar.
Both were rigged to IV drips and appeared frail as they lay in their ward beds.
The cause of the migrants' deaths is not yet clear, but Thailand's police chief has described the site as a "virtual prison camp" that was seemingly abandoned just days before its discovery, with the sick men left for dead.
A rescue worker said one unburied corpse belonged to the recently deceased, seeming to indicate the camp had been in existence for some time.
The border zone with Malaysia is criss-crossed by trafficking trails and is notorious for its network of secret camps where smuggled migrants are held, usually against their will, until relatives pay hefty ransoms.
Rights groups say the camp, which is a steep, slippery 40-minute hike from the nearest road, is likely to be just one of dozens in the area as the rewards of trafficking continue to outweigh the risks of being caught.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Myanmar, mainly from the Rohingya Muslim minority but also increasingly from Bangladesh, make the dangerous sea crossing to southern Thailand, a well-worn trafficking route often on the way south to Malaysia and beyond.
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