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Ten rebels die as commandos end hospital siege
RATCHABURI (AFP): Thai commandos launched a daring pre-dawn raid today to end a 24-hour hospital siege, killing 10 Burmese rebels and freeing their 500 hostages unharmed, officials said. “We were able to save all the hostages; we had to save them because they were patients,” the commander of the raid, Lt Gen Thaveep Suwannasingh, said. He said nine rebels were…
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Drug dealer shot dead in struggle with police
PHUKET TOWN: A drug dealer was shot dead yesterday in a struggle with narcotics police. A spokesman for Muang District Police Station said that undercover officers Sakarin Pookate and Paiboon Jantarin went to a house on Luang Por Wat Chalong Rd at about 1 am and asked Sarawuth ‘Yao’ Koysomboon, 29, to sell them some ya bah. Once the purchase…
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Myanmar dissidents seize Thai hospital
RATCHABURI (AFP): Heavily armed guerrillas from Myanmar dissident group God’s Army stormed a Thai hospital early this morning and took around 700 patients and staff hostage. Up to 20 fighters from the ethnic-Karen militia, which is led by two twin boys, stormed the hospital in the town of Ratchaburi, 123 kilometres (70 miles) west of Bangkok. Seven hours into the…
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German tourist caught with marijuana
NAI HARN: Police arrested a 41-year-old German tourist here on Saturday for possession of marijuana. The German, whom police named as Udo Euler, 41, was arrested shortly after midnight, when Chalong police received a report that there was a foreigner who “looked like a drug addict” walking on Nai Harn beach. The police went to the beach, where they stopped…
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Green Peace gets “up close and personal’ at Patong Beach
PATONG: Greenpeace (International) staged another rally today, but this time right on the beach in Patong. The event took place just two hours before the group left Phuket aboard the Rainbow Warrior at 1:00 pm. Others participating in the rally were Greenpeace (Thailand), the Phuket Environmental Protection Group, and the Federation of Southern Fisherfolk. Unlike the demonstration at the incinerator…
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Greenpeace stages demo at incinerator
PHUKET TOWN: Greenpeace (International) and Greenpeace (Thailand) staged a demonstration yesterday in front the incinerator plant at Koh Pii in Phuket Town. The 30 or so placard-carrying protesters started out from the Phuket Merlin Hotel, marching to a spot in front of the incinerator in Saphan Hin. There, they erected banners urging Phuket to shut down the facility. Organizers said…
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Thailand rocked by quake in Laos
BANGKOK (AFP): An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale rocked southern Laos and northern Thai provinces early today but no casualties were reported, Thai officials said. The epicentre of the quake was in a sparsely populated rural area of Laos, 160 kilometres (100 miles) to the northeast of Chiang Mai, Thailand’s northern meteorological center said. The tremor was felt…
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Fishermen arrested for illegal trawling
RAWAI: Chalong Police yesterday stopped four fishing boats and arrested their 16 crew members for fishing illegally in inshore waters. Yootthana Malakarn of the Phuket Fishery Department received an early-morning call from an informant to say that four fishing boats, thought to be dual-trawling, had been seen in the area between Maiton Island and Aow Island, to the south of…
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German tourist found dead in hotel room
NAI HARN: A German tourist was yesterday found dead, sitting in front of the dressing table in his hotel room. Pol Capt Sanae Panmee, Inspector of the Chalong Police Station, named the dead man as Jürgen Roland Preiss, 40. He had arrived in Phuket on January 11 for a two-week holiday and was staying at the Jungle Beach Resort in…
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Health Office to probe mystery “yellow rain”
PHUKET: People on Chao Fah Nok Rd have been astonished and not a little disturbed over the past 10 days by a stinking yellow rain that has fallen, apparently from the sky, for one or two minutes every evening. Samples of the yellow liquid, which falls over an area of about 100 meters in diameter, are to be collected this…
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Campaigning for provincial council heats up
PHUKET: Elections for 24 seats on the Provincial Administrative Council (OrBorJor) will take place across Phuket on February 5. With all seats being contested by at least two candidates, sound trucks have been out in force throughout the island, with campaign teams putting up posters and handing out candidate biographies and manifestoes to as many voters as possible. In Muang…
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Greenpeace ship to visit Phuket
PHUKET TOWN: The fabled Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior, will arrive in Phuket on Thursday to launch the environmental organization’s “Toxic Free” campaign. This will be the ship’s first visit to Phuket. Thara Buakumsri, a member of Greenpeace (Thailand), told the Gazette that the 55-meter vessel, carrying a multinational crew of 33, will arrive in the morning, tying up at…
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Two arrested for selling ya bah
PHUKET: Weerasak Tantiratthanapitak, 20, and Sunipol Boonnak, 24, were arrested in Phuket Town yesterday following a sting operation when they attempted to sell methamphetamine (ya bah) to plainclothes police. According to Pol Maj Amnuoy Kraiwootthinan of the Phuket Town Police Station, the police then went to the suspects’ apartment on Surin Rd. In the apartment they found 110 tablets of…
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Phuket in drive to stop whale shark killings
PHUKET: A move to protect whale sharks in Thai waters has been started in Phuket after reports of whale shark killings were brought to the attention of the local office of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). “TAT Phuket was informed by dive operators that they had witnessed whale sharks being hunted several times during their dive trips. The animals…
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900 ya bah pills seized as police nab 3 dealers
PHUKET TOWN: Police revealed today that they arrested a woman and two men on January 4 on charges of possession of ya bah with intent to sell. They also seized more than 900 pills of the drug with an estimated street value of around 135,000 baht. Pol Lt Passakorn Sootthikul, of the narcotics division of the Phuket Town Police Station,…
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Police make reporting lost documents easier
PHUKET TOWN: Police here have opened three new booths to make it easier for local people and tourists to report the loss of documents. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the new booths are at the intersection of Phang Nga Rd and Phuket Rd; in front of Suan Luang Park on Chaofa Rd; and at the public…
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Patong bars raided for staying open late
PATONG: Kathu police raided several bars and nightclubs in Patong yesterday morning for staying open past the 2 am official closing time. Among the venues raided, said Pol Col Kokiat Wongwarachart, Superintendent of the Kathu Police Station, were Hollywood 99 Pub, Up-2-You Bar, Night Moves, Night Station, The Shark Club, VIP Bar, Chicago’s Fun Pub, as well as several other…
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Easy visas “are encouraging foreign criminals’
BANGKOK (AFP): The easing of visa restrictions as part of Thailand’s efforts to boost tourism has made the country an attractive base for international criminal gangs, officials said yesterday. Songkram Chuenpibal, deputy secretary of the National Security Council, said instituting a visa-on-arrival system for many countries allowed unwanted elements to filter through. “There are Mafia gangs, drugs-trafficking gangs and money-laundering…
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BBAP elects new committee
PHUKET TOWN: The British Business Association of Phuket (BBAP) held its first annual general meeting last night, at the Royal Phuket City Hotel. Members reelected Andy Dowden as chairman and Damian Barratt as treasurer. Paul Spring and William Pinsent were also reelected as committee members. Founder member and secretary Alan Cooke stepped down. On the recommendation of the outgoing committee,…
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Business registrations soared in 1999
PHUKET TOWN: Business confidence soared in Phuket last year, with the number of companies registering in the province leaping by more than 50% compared with 1998, and comfortably exceeding even the pre-Asian-Crisis levels of 1996. Figures compiled by the Phuket Commercial Registration Office show 505 limited companies were registered last year, compared with 332 in the previous year, 311 in…
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Thailand to consider lethal injection for executions
BANGKOK (AFP): Thailand’s cabinet will tomorrow consider whether to introduce lethal injections for executions in response to mounting claims that the current use of firing squads is barbaric. “People are horrified that convicts are currently shot to death,” Deputy Interior Minister Vattana Asavahem told reporters this afternoon. The idea of lethal injections was floated in 1996 but never reached the…
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Finnish tourist arrested for overstaying visa
KARON: A 40-year-old Finnish tourist was arrested in Karon yesterday for overstaying his visa – by eight months. Pol Lt Teerawat Liumsuwan of the Chalong Police Station told the Gazette that the tourist, whom he named as Arto Mikel Kivela, arrived in Phuket from Finland on March 10 last year and stayed at the Sompit Bar in Karon Center. Having…
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1999 HIV infections likely to show increase
PHUKET: Based on preliminary figures for 1999, Phuket’s health chief believes the number of people diagnosed as HIV-positive will be significantly higher than the 283 diagnosed in 1998. If Dr Boonrieng Chuchaisangrat’s preliminary figures are accurately reflected in the final statistics, the number of HIV infections per 100,000 people in Phuket at the end of 1999 will put the island…
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Thailand launches drive to discredit Hollywood film
BANGKOK (AFP): Thailand has launched a worldwide campaign to discredit the Hollywood movie “Anna and the King”, which censors have banned as an insult to the monarchy and a distortion of history, weekend news reports said. The foreign ministry has issued guidelines to its embassies saying 20th Century Fox’s claim the film is based on historical events “was almost completely…
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Tourist dies in head-on bike crash
KARON: An Australian youth was killed and a Swedish tourist hospitalized early yesterday morning when their motorcycles collided head-on near Le Meridien Phuket resort, on the road between Patong and Karon. Pol Lt Teerawat Liumsuwan of Chalong Police Station named the dead man as Simeth Julian, 18, of Melbourne. He said the Australian was riding a red Honda Dream toward…
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Thai customs nab Japanese drug trafficker
BANGKOK (AFP): Thai Customs officers charged a Japanese woman with drug trafficking this afternoon after she was arrested just before boarding a Thai Airways flight to Osaka, officials said. Customs officers searched Tamaki Nagayama, 29, and found 1,300 amphetamine tablets strapped to her stomach. Nagayama confessed she was trafficking in drugs and helped by friends from Thailand and Myanmar, said…
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Cook delivers special surprise aboard dive boat
BURMA BANKS: A 28-year-old woman gave birth to a baby girl at sea while on a seven-day live-aboard Millennium dive trip from Phuket to the Burma Banks. While guests aboard the boat, the Ugly Duck, were having dinner on the upper deck on the evening of January 2, Chamnan (“Nang”) Srinuan, a second cook working for High Class Adventure Phuket,…
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Occupancy rates improve dramatically
PHUKET: Occupancy rates at most of Phuket’s hotels are looking much better than two weeks ago. Almost all of the hotels contacted by the Gazette today report that cancellations have dwindled and bookings are picking up. Our table illustrates what has happened over the past two weeks. Generally, at this time of year, Phuket’s hotels budget for occupancies of 75-80%.…
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Long jail terms for Krabi tourist killers
KRABI (AFP): The two teenagers arrested for the murder of an Australian tourist in Krabi have received long jail terms after a nine-hour court session in which both pleaded guilty. The older of the two, 19-year-old Pairoj Yoamyat, was initially sentenced to death for robbing and murdering Cheree Cobcroft, 24, whose naked body was found tied to a stake near…
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German tourist killed “by shark’
BANGKOK (AFP): A German tourist has died after apparently being bitten by a shark in the waters off Koh Pha Ngan, police said today. The man, identified by police as Stephan Olaf Kahl, 35, from Hamburg, bled to death from a 10-centimeter-long cut on his right arm and a 15-centimeter cut to his right calf. “He was pronounced dead before…
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