Reuters-Thai police kill 6 drug sus

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Subject: Reuters-Thai police kill 6 drug suspects in jungle battle 

Thai police kill 6 drug suspects in jungle battle
11:39 p.m. Jun 06, 1999 Eastern
BANGKOK, June 7 (Reuters) - Thai border police shot dead at least six
suspected amphetamine traffickers in a jungle battle close to the Myanmar
border early on Monday, a police spokesman said.

The shootout in Chiang Rai province, in the Thai part of the notorious
Golden Triangle narcotics producing region, involved a unit of 36 border
patrol police assigned to crackdown on amphetamine trafficking, the
spokesman said.

``Initial reports show all the dead men were members of a hill tribe drug
gang and police have seized a large amount of amphetamines,'' he said,
adding that another suspect was wounded.

The Golden Triangle is formed by the intersection of the Myanmar, Lao and
Thai borders and is one of the world's main sources of opium and its
derivative heroin.

In recent years its drug gangs have diversified into production of
amphetamines, huge quantities of which have flooded across the border into
Thailand from Myanmar, where most Golden Triangle drugs are produced.

Monday's police operation follows a raid on a village in the neighbouring
province of Chiang Mai in early April in which nine villagers were killed.

Police said that raid, apparently the result of a drugs dispute, was carried
out by members of the United Wa State Army an ethnic force which controls
Myanmar's main opium growing area.