PHUKET: Wild rumors that 10 people died in the Tiger Discotheque blaze on Phuket can be attributed to the confused coverage of the aftermath of the deadly fire.

Some British newspapers today carry the following extra-confusing paragraph: ''Confusion surrounds the inquiry as police are yet to formally identify four victims, believed to be two men and two women, and officers are also thought to be investigating at least three other missing people.''

Yesterday Thai Visa even issued an email: ''FLASH: At least 3 more victims in Tiger Disco fire.''

Really, there is no confusion, and no more victims. Rescue workers carried four bodies from the charred disco in Patong after Friday's after-hours blaze. Onlooking journalists counted them.

Then later that day, Phuket police called for resorts, guesthouses and members of the public to advise them of people believed to be missing as a result of the blaze.

More people came forward to declare friends or relatives ''missing'' than there are bodies.

This does not mean that more than four people died in the blaze. It only means that there is a difference between a person being ''missing'' and being ''unaccounted for.''

The lesson about the difference between numbers of dead, missing and unaccounted for should have been absorbed after the 2004 tsunami, when Thailand suffered its greatest natural disaster.

In the days that followed the tsunami, thousands of people from all around the world and across Thailand alerted diplomats and authorities to their ''missing'' friends and relatives.

In fact, the vast majority of them turned out to be peope who had been travelling in Thailand, Phuket or the Andaman region, and who hadn't thought it necessary to report back home that they were safe. People who were ''unaccounted for,'' not ''missing.''

There were almost 5400 deaths from the tsunami in Thailand, most of them around Khao Lak and on Phi Phi, with about 300 fatalities on Phuket.

However, double-counting of the thousands of unidentified bodies and the missing meant that some reputable news agencies - and the online reference source Wikipedia - still report that the tsunami toll in Thailand exceeded 8000.

The same mistake shouldn't be made today to exaggerate the Tiger Disco blaze. It remains a tragedy for four families, and for Phuket.

What's important is that unlike a natural disaster, this one need a thorough investigation.

The aim should be to find out what caused the blaze and whether the owners of the building and/or the entertainment group who occupied it could have done more.

Phuket should always recall the lessons of its history. More than 300 victims of the 2004 tsunami remain unidentified and are buried in a graveyard north of Phuket.

However, the identities of the four victims of the Tiger Disco inferno are likely to be known with certainty today.