ZAKA volunteers have become best known worldwide from the television images of yellow-vested volunteers collecting the last bits of human remains following terror attacks in Israel.

Jerusalem - Israel’s experts in rescue and recovery arrived in Phuket, Thailand on Wednesday to begin the task of searching for Israelis and to assist local authorities there in the gruesome task of identifying remains of thousands of victims of Sunday’s earthquake and tidal wave disaster.

Earlier on Tuesday, Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation listed two Israelis among the foreigners known to have been killed.

But no Israelis have been confirmed dead yet here, although some 60 Israelis traveling in the areas hit by the tsunamis in Thailand, Sri Lanka and India still remain unaccounted for. Another 10 are hospitalized, Foreign Ministry spokesman David Saranga said.

Some 1,574 people have been confirmed dead in Thailand including 473 tourists from 36 nationalities, but thousands of tourists are still reported missing from the area.

A team of 12 Israeli volunteers including forensic experts from ZAKA (the Hebrew acronym for Identification of Victims of Tragedies) was sent to Thailand. They will gather basic information, and more teams will be sent to the site based on their recommendation.

ZAKA volunteers have become best known worldwide from the television images of yellow-vested volunteers collecting the last bits of human remains following terror attacks in Israel.

ZAKA founder and director Yehuda Meshi-Zahav said an hour after arriving in Phuket his volunteers were already at work.

“There is a lot of data. There are many sources giving data...According to experience it’s impossible to depend on anyone,” Meshi-Zahav said in a radio interview from Phuket.

“There is an orderly list that arrived from official sources,” he said. “There are many, many bodies, in every place. We need to go one by one and do the identification process. There are people here that are experts in DNA, fingerprinting and teeth [identification]. Our experience is the biggest in the world.”

The team is also helping local officials and has very good cooperation with them. They are hoping that they will bring Israelis back alive but, if not, to at least identify their remains and return them to Israel for burial.

The volunteers signed on for at least two to four weeks. They have a mobile lab with them capable of testing DNA samples.

In Thailand, authorities have organized the bodies, separating between locals and foreigners and have promised to take photos, fingerprints and DNA samples if they have to bury the dead for health reasons.

In 2003, more than 100,000 Israelis visited Thailand.

Media reports here told the story of an Israeli couple, who survived on the roof of a van along with a Palestinian couple. Yossi and Inbar Gross told the story of their survival along with the unnamed Palestinian couple who then gave them money to get to Bangkok after all their belongings were washed away.

Israeli Aid to Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, where the death toll has risen to more than 22,000, the government asked Israel not to send a 150-man team, which was due to set up a field hospital. However, 82 tons of humanitarian aid and medical equipment were shipped to the country, including blankets, water, food, medicine, generators, tents and beds.

Sri Lanka explained that it was overflowing with rescue teams and they needed more supplies than people so Israel changed the contents of its airlift, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saranga said.

In addition to the governmental aid, Magen David Adom (the Red Star of David), Israel’s equivalent to the International Red Cross, dispatched a shipment of medicines to Sri Lanka to aid trauma victims.

It contained more than 4,000 bottles of a special protein plasma used for treating trauma victims to be distributed among hospitals in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo.

The first day an Israeli medical team was one of the first to arrive in Sri Lanka and is still operating there. It includes several doctors from Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, who are specialists in rescue operations, trauma and pediatrics. Hadassah hospital has treated the most severe terror victim cases during the last several years.

Israel sent medical assistance to Bangkok, Thailand. A private Israeli organization Latet (to give) also sent tons of supplies to the grief stricken areas. India announced that it did not need help from any country.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, was hardest hit by the disaster with the death toll already more than 45,000.