Deadly threat : Stoned on the roads

Deadly threat : Stoned on the roads

Thais returning home for the New Year festivities have been the victims of rock-throwing gangs in separate attacks on lonely country roads.

The windscreen of a car driven by a Bangkok woman was smashed when a group of men threw stones on the highway in Surat Thani's Ban Na Doem district in southern Thailand.

Sukanya Panthoing, 31, told the police she had not stopped for fear of what the men might do.

The wife of a truck driver, Ladda Bunliang, needed five stitches on her right eyebrow after being hit by a rock thrown by two men on a motorcycle.

Her husband Charn was driving his 18-ton truck in the Nakhon Luang district of Ayutthaya province, north of Bangkok.

The Ayutthaya Provincial Court last week sentenced two members of a stone-throwing gang to 25 years in prison and ordered them to pay 1 million baht in damages for attacking and robbing the driver of a delivery truck in the province.

Pol Maj-Gen Nares Nanthachot, the Ayutthaya police chief, said it was difficult to stop stone throwing gangs because their victims usually dare not stop to identify their attackers and because such strikes often take place in the dark.

Ordinary traffic accidents were significantly fewer than last year on the first day of the extended New Year break, with 33 deaths in 440 road accidents, said Banyat Chansena, deputy director of the Road Safety Centre. In 2006, 68 people died in almost 700 accidents on the first day of the holiday.

Banyat, who is also deputy interior minister, said motorists appear to have taken to heart government messages on road safety.

Some 2,900 police checkpoints are being operated across the country in a campaign to stop drunks getting behind the wheel. (Roundup by dpa)