2 UNSW students murdered(圖)

Inspecting the yard at the Barker St flat yesterday / Chris Hyde

THEIR bodies were found inside the top-floor unit of a two-storey Eastern Suburbs red brick block near where both had attended university.

Police know both men were University of NSW students and came from Singapore.

Last night their murders were being investigated by a crime task force inquiring into the spiralling incidence of Asian-related crime in Sydney.

Responding to a triple-0 call, police found the men's bodies in the Barker St, Randwick, unit at 2.25pm yesterday.

One man was found in a room at the front of the unit while the second was in the rear. Police declined to speculate how they had died.

They also would not comment on reports that knives and baseball bats had been used in the killings, saying only that several items had been removed for forensic investigation.

An unknown number of assailants were involved in the killings, they said.

A former flatmate who asked not to be named said three men were living in the apartment. He said all were students from Singapore enrolled at UNSW, located one block away.

The man, who had turned up to collect some belongings, was visibly shaken when he learned a double murder had been committed at his friends' flat.

He tried repeatedly to raise the friends on his mobile telephone before being led away to speak to police.

He last spoke to the men on Saturday. "Everything was normal then," he said. "Maybe it's not them."

Neighbour Ayman Al-Darra said the units were owned by a Lebanese family, who lived downstairs and rented the upstairs unit to a succession of students from the university.

Police sealed off Barker St between Kennedy and Botany Sts while forensic investigators searched for evidence and police canvassed local residents.

Two people were at Maroubra police station helping detectives with the investigation, Superintendent David Owen said.

A post-mortem examination would be carried out this morning, Supt Owen said.

International students from Asia have been targeted by criminals for extortion and kidnapping, a trend that increasingly worries police. Nineteen of the last 30 kidnappings in NSW have involved Asian victims or perpetrators.

Late last month, the body of 19-year-old UTS student Van Linh Phun was found strangled in the back of a car after a kidnapping attempt that went wrong.

Two weeks earlier, Shan Shan Xing, 21, smiled and laughed in court as she was formally charged with starving and assaulting Ting Mu after they kidnapped her and demanded $120,000 from her Beijing-based parents.

The Daily Telegraph