Two Hong Kong Police Identification Bureau officers helped Interpol confirm the identities of 15 tsunami victims in Phuket in a month, by fingerprints.

According to a government press release Tuesday, of them, nine were Hong Kong residents of Canadian, French, German, British and Chinese nationalities. The other six were Canadian, German and Swedish nationals.

At Interpol's request, the bureau sent Sergeant Hsia Kai-keung and Woman Sergeant Au Suk-yee to the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification Information Management Center in Phuket from Feb.

13 to March 13. They handled 80 files containing over 400 finger and palm prints of victims.

Between Dec. 31, when the center was set up, and March 13, the facility identified 800-plus victims, 84 by fingerprints.

Hsia said: "we are very pleased that in a matter of one month we made 15 positive identifications, which represents nearly 18 percent of the total. We were just one team out of 13 working at the center, so our results are quite outstanding."

They worked at a computer workstation on day or night shifts, together with experts from Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Norway, Portugal, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei.

They input fingerprints into the computer and then proceeded with the tedious job of making comparisons with a long list of "candidates".

Hsia said it was a tough job as they could only process a few files each day, containing victims' DNA, dental and fingerprint information.

"Our job was not as simple as it might sound. A lot of work had to be done before fingerprints were input into the computer. Very often a file contained more than one fingerprint, and we handled a file containing more than 30 finger and palm prints. And the 'candidate list' output by the computer was usually rather long. We came across a list containing over 130 'candidates'."

Miss Au said that they also had to input and search for palm prints on the computer -- a job they have never done in Hong Kong.

"On our last two days in Phuket, we were asked by the manager to do quality control checking work for fingerprints input by other countries' experts. I think this was a recognition of the overall high standard and quality of our work at the center," Au said.