An angry crowd hurled homemade fire bombs and torched vehicles at a police station on Phuket to protest the deaths of two young men who died in a motorcycle crash while being chased by police, authorities said yesterday.
No tourists were injured by the violence, which started on Saturday evening and ended early yesterday, Phuket Police Lieutenant Colonel Amnuay Kraiwuttinan said.
Local media reported that scores of people missed flights as a result of the riot, which blocked a main road to the airport for several hours.
Photo: AFP
The protest occurred outside the island’s main tourist areas at the Thalang Police Station, where a crowd that swelled to more than 300 people blocked the road between 8pm on Saturday and 4am yesterday, Amnuay said.
Police and soldiers were called in to restore order early yesterday after at least nine cars were set on fire and 11 other vehicles were damaged by the crowd, which hurled objects at the police station as officers were trapped inside, he said.
“They threw things to break the windows first, then they threw fire bombs at the police station and we had to move inside. It was a riot. It was loud and chaotic,” Amnuay said, adding that officers were instructed to stay calm and not fight back.
Police were investigating the deaths of the two young Thai men, aged 17 and 22.
Amnuay said police suspected the men of drug possession after they sped past a police checkpoint and refused to stop, prompting officers to chase them.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS