By AFP

Thai police are hunting for the parents of a newborn infant who survived being stabbed multiple times and buried alive in a field, officers said on Thursday.

The baby boy, who had more than a dozen stab wounds, was discovered in a shallow grave covered with leaves by a farmer in the northeastern province of Khon Kaen.

The woman found the stricken baby after hearing the infant's cries while her cows grazed on a eucalyptus plantation on Tuesday, local media reported.

"We've deployed police to find the culprit," case officer Nopporn Rithnual told AFP.

The infant was now "out of danger" according to Nopporn and being cared for at a hospital in the province, with local TV channels airing footage of doctors hovering around the child's bed.

Police have yet to uncover a motive behind the grisly crime.

Abortions are illegal but common in Thailand, which has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the region but a conservative society that stigmatises premarital sex.

Despite the country's reputation as one of the globe's sex industry hubs, sex education targeting youth is limited and largely focuses on promoting abstinence.

In 2011 an undertaker was sentenced to 40 months in prison for helping hide roughly 2,000 illegally aborted foetuses on the grounds of a Buddhist temple in Bangkok.

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