Thai Forces Storm Hospital, Kill 10 Myanmar Guerrillas

Ending a 22-hour standoff, Thai security forces stormed a hospital here today and killed 10 heavily armed Myanmar rebels who had held hundreds of patients, visitors and staff members hostage.

The approximately 900 people who were in the walled, six-acre compound when the ordeal began Monday morning were either freed, had escaped or were rescued during the operation this morning, said Lt. Gen. Thaweep Suwannasingha, regional Thai army commander.

No hostages were injured, but two police officers were.

Once Thai troops secured the front of the hospital, a fleet of ambulances drove in and began ferrying exhausted survivors to another hospital for medical checks.

The rebels, who belonged to the fringe group God’s Army, took the hostages to pressure the Thai government to help their beleaguered movement.

The group is from the ethnic Karen minority and is led by twin 12-year-old boys believed to have magical powers. The twins were not involved in the takeover.

Like many Karens, the followers of God’s Army are fundamentalist Christians in a predominantly Buddhist country. They accuse Myanmar’s military regime of widespread murder, rape and arson.

Officials said early today that nine gunmen had been killed and that one was believed missing. Lt. Gen. Anant Heamathanong said later that nine of the rebels had died at the scene and that the 10th was killed in a gun battle after fleeing. Ten bodies wrapped in white cloth were dumped in front of a hospital building to be displayed to the media.

Once the government operation began, shooting erupted and police and soldiers, both on foot and in trucks and armed with M-16 assault rifles, sped into the compound.

Automatic weapons fire and explosions thudded in the darkness, the latter possibly from grenades, bombs or mines that the hostage-takers had rigged around the hospital. The predawn assault lasted for an hour.

The hostage-takers had been in control of the five-story central administration and emergency room buildings but could not keep a grip on eight outlying buildings. Many patients and staff members in those structures escaped Monday.