BANGKOK: Thai police arrested three suspected people smugglers over the deaths of three Rohingya refugees who suffocated in the back of trucks in Thailand, officers said on Saturday.

Three Rohingya refugees died and six were injured after traffickers allegedly packed 26 people who had made their way across the Thai-Myanmar border into two vehicles.

The mainly Muslim Rohingya are heavily persecuted in war-torn western Myanmar, and thousands risk their lives each year to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia through Thailand.

A representative for Thailand's Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) said on Saturday they had arrested a main suspect — Somkiat, or "Bang Golf", 30 — in southeastern Chanthaburi province on Wednesday.

Two suspected accomplices, Nattawut, 20, and Pongpitsanu, 20, were arrested in Bangkok on the same day.

They are all being held on the grounds of "smuggling illegal immigrants into the kingdom", police said in a statement.

Police added that Somkiat was working with other trafficking networks in the country and had been offered around 3,000 baht per refugee successfully smuggled.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh in 2017 during a crackdown by the military that is now the subject of a United Nations genocide court case.

Myanmar's military seized power in a 2021 coup and three years of war since then have displaced millions of people in the country.

  - AFP