Murder spree rocks safe city streets

SINGAPORE has had an unusually high number of killings in the first six weeks of the year.

Eight people were murdered between January 6 and February 11, unusual for Singapore, whose three million people pride themselves on their safe streets, low crime rate and strict laws.

So far, arrests have been made in only one of this year's cases.

To make matters worse, police have also found three bodies floating in local waters within the past week. One was a Chinese national missing from a ship.

The Straits Times said police could not give the number of murders in the same period last year, but said eight killings in six weeks was "unusual". Forty people were killed in Singapore in 1997.

Out of this year's cases, police made arrests only in the murder of a 27-year-old Bulgarian student brutally maimed and killed last month.

 Published in the South China Morning Post. Feb 14, 1998