[pabianice]

"Each of [the wooden coffins] was 40cm long and 10cm wide

That's 16 inches X 4 inches. They must have been Chinese elves.

[PAR35]

Read on down in the story. It later says that each of the coffin slabs was that size. The use of the brackets in the first reference is a journaistic convention to show that the reporter is putting words in the mouth of the person being quoted which were not actually uttered.