Thai jail convicts hold staff hostage

Thai jail convicts hold staff hostage
REUTERS

BANGKOK, NOV 22: The governor of a Thai provincial prison and six other prison officers were being held hostage by a group of eight armed Myanmar prisoners on Wednesday, police said.

Gunshots were heard from inside the Samut Sakorn provincial prison, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Bangkok, after the hostage takers detained the officers around midday local time (0500 GMT), police told reporters.

Local television stations said one volunteer member of the prison staff, identified as a teacher, had been shot dead. Police said at least two people were injured in the incident but denied that anyone had been killed.

At least 500 plain clothed and uniformed police surrounded the 2,500-inmate jail while dozens of police snipers had taken up positions around the prison compound, witnesses said.

Police said the hostage takers, who had all committed serious crimes, including murder, wanted to be allowed to escape to Myanmar. None of the hostage takers were political prisoners.

Samut Sakorn police chief Suraseeh Soonthornsathoon told local television the inmates had offered to release five hostages in exchange for a trip with three prison officials to the western Thai province of Ratchaburi, near the Myanmar border.

He said the hostage takers had at least three pistols and two rifles and had tied a hand grenade to the door to the room where the hostages were being held, apparently to deter their escape.

A local television station showed footage of one hostage taker holding a pistol to the head of a hostage whose cheek was bleeding. "We have not agreed on any demand made by the hostage takers yet," Suraseeh said. "We want everybody to be safe."

The hostage takers had earlier seized a light truck delivering food to the prison, he said. Samut Sakorn is a area of labour-intensive industries, which employ large numbers of immigrant workers, including many thousands from neighbouring Myanmar.

Myanmar exiles have been involved in two serious incidents in Thailand recently, both linked to groups opposed to the military government in Yangon.

In October 1999, the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok was taken over by a group of armed rebels who eventually escaped into the jungle along the Thai-Myanmar border.

In January, another group of Myanmar rebels, possibly linked with the embassy siege, burst into a hospital in Ratchaburi Province, just west of Bangkok, and took 700 staff and patients hostage.

All 10 guerrillas in the Ratchaburi hospital siege were shot dead by Thai security forces.