Thai police seized a massive 596kg haul of crystal methamphetamine, or Ice, from a lorry and pickup truck in Manorom district of the central province of Chainat on Wednesday.

The seizure followed the arrest, in Chainat, of Mr. Sue sae Kue, a hill tribe man who lives in the Pob Phra district of the northwestern province of Tak.

Police sources said that they received a tipoff that a drug gang was to deliver a large shipment of Ice to a customer on June 10^th at Boeng Chawark Lake in Derm Bang Nang Buat district of the central province of Suphan Buri.

A plainclothes police team, from the Region 7 Provincial Police Bureau and the Office of Narcotics Control Board, was dispatched to rendezvous point to stake it out, but no one showed up as reported. The following day a police informant told them that the drug gang had changed meeting place to the bird park in Chainat province on Wednesday.

Police nabbed Mr. Sue in his black sedan and questioned him until they managed to extract information about the large shipment of drugs, which would be delivered to a small soi in Village 4 of Tambon U-tapao, Manorom district of Chainat.

The police team then rushed to the scene where they found a group of men unloading a pickup truck.  All the men fled, abandoning the two trucks containing over half a metric ton of crystal meth.

Pol Gen Srivara Rangsibrahmanakul, the national deputy police chief, went to the Region 7 Provincial Police Bureau yesterday evening to personally question Mr. Sue, who is believed to be a key figure in the northern drug gang which is suspected to have, over time, smuggled tons of illegal drug into Thailand from a neighbouring country.