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BANGKOK, Dec 25, 2023 (AFP) – Thailand’s progressive Move Forward Party, which won this year’s election but was shut out of government, said Monday it was confident about a court case probing campaign pledges to reform royal insult laws. MFP won most seats in the May poll, but then-leader Pita Limjaroenrat was blocked from becoming prime minister by conservative forces in the upper house of parliament. The party’s vow to reform Thailand’s tough lese-majeste laws […]
BANGKOK, Dec 25, 2023 (AFP) – Floods caused by intense rainfall have affected tens of thousands of people in Thailand’s deep south, officials said Monday, with some roads and railway lines forced to close. At least a dozen schools in the provinces of Yala and Narathiwat have been forced to close, while footage from the region showed homes and shops inundated with murky brown waters and residents taking refuge on upper floors. The heavy rains […]
BANGKOK, Dec 18, 2023 (AFP) – Thai soldiers killed 15 suspected drug smugglers in a shootout in a remote northern district near the Myanmar border, an army official said Monday. The clash on Saturday evening took place in Chiang Rai province’s Mae Fah Luang district, close to the “Golden Triangle” where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet, which has long been a hub for smuggling. After the clash, officers found 17 bags containing more than two […]
By Alexis Hontang with Suy Se in Siem Reap BANGKOK, Dec 6, 2023 (AFP) – Major airport expansion projects are taking off across Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and a new airline is set to launch next year — all banking on an expected boom in air travel in Southeast Asia, fuelled by Chinese and Indian tourists. But there are doubts about whether it will materialise in an uncertain economic environment and as worries about the […]
BANGKOK, Dec 5, 2023 (AFP) – A double-decker coach smashed into a tree in southern Thailand, killing at least 14 people and injuring 32, police said Tuesday. The long-distance bus was travelling from Bangkok to the kingdom’s far south when it collided with the tree in coastal Prachuap Khiri Khan province on Monday night. Photos published in local media showed the front part of the bus split in two by the force of the crash, […]
BANGKOK, Nov 30, 2023 (AFP) – Seventeen Thai hostages kidnapped and held for weeks by Hamas in the Gaza Strip are expected to return home on Thursday to be met by overjoyed relatives at the Bangkok airport. Tens of thousands of Thais were working in Israel, mostly in the agricultural sector, when Palestinian militants poured over the border on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 240, according to Israeli authorities. At […]
TEHRAN, Nov 25, 2023 (AFP) – Iran said Saturday it helped broker the surprise release of Thai nationals who had been held by Palestinian militants in war-ravaged Gaza since their shock attack on Israel last month. On Friday, Hamas unexpectedly released 10 Thais and a Filipino, along with the 13 Israeli women and children that were part of a temporary truce deal with Israel. Israel in turn freed 39 Palestinian women and children from its […]
By Adel Zaanoun with Hazel Ward in Tel Aviv GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories, Nov 25, 2023 (AFP) – Hamas on Saturday released a second group of Israeli and foreign civilians it had been holding hostage in the Gaza Strip in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, after an hours-long unexpected delay set nerves on edge. Israeli authorities said 13 Israelis and four Thai citizens had returned to Israel. The joint announcement by the Israeli military and the […]
By Montira RUNGJIRAJITTRANON BANGKOK, Nov 25, 2023 (AFP) – Kittiya Thuengsaeng thought her 28-year-old boyfriend was among the almost 40 Thais killed in Hamas’s deadly assault on Israel last month. But on Friday night Thai officials shocked her with news so good it seemed impossible. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she told AFP, describing the moment she saw a photograph of Wichai Kalapat after he was released from weeks in captivity. “I had a chat […]
BANGKOK, Nov 22, 2023 (AFP) – Thailand’s football team have parted ways with head coach Alexandre Polking, officials said Wednesday, after a mixed start to their 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign. A 3-1 win over Singapore on Tuesday was not enough to save the Brazilian-German’s job, after his men went down 2-1 to China last week. Team manager Nualphan Lamsam said Polking would be replaced by Masatada Ishii, the 56-year-old Japanese coach who led Buriram […]
BANGKOK, Nov 19, 2023 (AFP) – More than 250 Thais trapped in northern Myanmar by an upsurge in fighting between the junta and an alliance of ethnic minority groups are to be repatriated through China, Thailand’s foreign ministry said Sunday. Fighting has surged across a swathe of Myanmar since late October, when the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Arakan Army (AA) launched attacks on the military. The rugged, […]
BANGKOK, Nov 18, 2023 (AFP) – Forty-one Thais trapped in Myanmar for three weeks by an upsurge in fighting between the junta and an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups returned to the kingdom on Saturday, the Thai army said. Fighting has raged since October 27 across northern Shan state near the Chinese border after the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Arakan Army (AA) launched attacks on the […]
