DHAKA: Thai police have discovered about 200 suspected Turkish refugees at a secret camp in the kingdom’s deep south, officials said on Thursday, describing the case as ‘unprecedented’.

Thailand has long been a hub for people trafficking, with thousands of Rohingya boat people from neighbouring Myanmar believed to have passed through the kingdom in recent years.

The 200 refugees, whom police said identified themselves as Turkish, were detained after a raid on a camp in a mountainous rubber plantation on Wednesday night in the southern province of Songkhla.

‘It’s an unprecedented case that there are so many Turkish people arrested here,’ Police Major General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot said by telephone, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1641 HRS, MAR 13, 2014