Nearly 20 million methamphetamine pills were seized by police and para-military forces in Nakhon Sawan, Lampang and Chiang Rai provinces on Monday, as illegal narcotics continue to flow into Thailand from Myanmar.
In Phayuha Khiri district of Nakhon Sawan, police manning a checkpoint stopped and searched a trailer truck loaded with vegetables, as it was thought to be carrying illicit narcotics.
The truck was subsequently driven to a highway police station for X-ray examination, which confirmed the presence of several bags containing meth pills hidden among the vegetables.
The suspicious plastic bags contained about 10 million meth pills.
In a separate seizure, police in Thoen district of Lampang found a passenger car abandoned in the compound of Huey Ko Luang Temple in Mae Mok sub-district, after they received a tipoff that a rented car, believed to be carrying illegal narcotics, would pass through Thoen district on its way to the central region. A subsequent search of the car found five million meth tablets.
A pickup truck was also found abandoned near Mae Pam reservoir. No drugs were found in the vehicle, which is believed to be linked to the passenger car found on the temple grounds.
In a third seizure, paramilitary rangers clashed with a group of armed men, believed to be a drug caravan, near the Thai-Myanmar border, close to a Thai village in Mae Fah Luang district of Chiang Rai.
The group fled the scene after a brief firefight, leaving behind a dead comrade and four backpacks, which were found to contain 450,000 meth pills.
Meanwhile, in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat, police said that, since the launch of an anti-drug crackdown on February 15, they have seized about 8 million meth pills, 25,310 Ketamine tablets and about Bt1.2 million in cash.
