Thailand is investigating eight people for the 2004 Tak Bai killings

This episode is still among the bloodiest in the southern provinces of Thailand's ongoing armed conflict.

Eight former security officials are to face charges in Thailand for the 2004 Tak Bai deaths, which resulted in the suffocation of 78 protestors who were captured and stacked atop one another in army trucks.

The announcement made by the attorney general's office on Wednesday comes just a few weeks before the case's statute of limitations expires on October 25 as well as after a Thai court earlier this month approved a related complaint brought by the families of the victims of seven former elite security personnel.

At a press conference, Attorney General Spokeswoman Prayut Bejaguran stated that the suspects may have known that what they did would cause the 78 persons they were responsible for to be suffocated to death.

In the protracted, Southern Thailand insurgency in the mostly Muslim, the episode is still among the worst. Following their apprehension at a demonstration in front of a police station and subsequent stacking in the rear of Thai military trucks, the demonstrators perished.

Under the leadership of PM Thaksin Shinawatra, the administration at the time expressed regret for the Tak Bai protest deaths but denied any involvement.

Meanwhile, police first claimed that several demonstrators were armed. In the roughly 20 years of instability in Thailand's mostly Muslim border areas with Malaysia, about 7,600 people have died.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thaksin's daughter, took over as prime minister of Thailand last month.

A Narathiwat court last week interrogated a prior military commander and issued notices for six former top security professionals when the families' complaint remained unanswered.

The commander is currently a member of the Pheu Thai Party, which is in power.