At least 15 suspected drug traffickers have been killed in a Thai Army operation in Chiang Mai province, on the country’s border with Burma.
According to the Thai Police on Thursday, the suspected drug traffickers were part of a group of 30 criminals who entered the country through the border town of Fang.
The army was guarding this smuggling route when the soldiers encountered the group late on Wednesday, whose members began to open fire on the soldiers, according to the account of the security forces reported by the news portal ‘Nation Thailand’.
The shooting lasted about 10 minutes, but police could not access the scene until Thursday morning. When they did, they found 15 lifeless bodies and 29 backpacks containing methamphetamine. A pistol and a grenade were also found at the scene, according to officers.
Methamphetamine trafficking in Thailand has skyrocketed since the military coup in neighboring Thailand in February last year. Since the return of the Burmese military to power, security forces in East and Southeast Asian countries have seized 172 tons of methamphetamine, the equivalent of more than 1 billion pills, according to preliminary data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
