Thailand
to control
guns, firearms
Bangkok, Oct 6: Thailand is stepping up controls on guns and imitation firearms, officials said, in an effort to close legal loopholes following a shooting at a Bangkok shopping mall that left two people dead and five others injured. Thai Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Thursday that the government will implement measures to restrict the possession, bearing and use of firearms, including a crackdown on illegal weapons and tighter regulations on imitation guns, Xinhua news agency reported. Possession of blank guns, BB guns, and other replica firearms that can be modified into lethal weapons will require a license, he told reporters after a meeting with concerned agencies, adding that authorities will also conduct a stricter inspection on those illegally imported and sold online. (AP)
Drone attack in Syria kills 100
Damascus, Oct 6: At least 100 people were killed in a drone attack that struck a military academy in Syria’s Homs province while a cadet graduation ceremony was underway, state media reported on Friday. Citing a statement from the General Command of the Armed Forces, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency said several drones carrying explosives targeted the academy just after the ceremony ended on Thursday afternoon, reports the BBC. The armed forces “considers this act an unprecedented criminal one, and affirms that it will respond with full force and determination to these terrorist groups wherever they are”, the statement added. The cadets’ families, and women and children were among the dead, it added. So far, no individual or group has claimed the attack, the BBC reported. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the country’s Defence Minister had attended the ceremony but left minutes before the attack. (IANS)
NGO rescues ship, saves
258 migrants
Tripoli, Oct 6: A nonprofit rescue ship operating off the coast of Libya saved 258 migrants in two separate operations in the early hours of Friday morning. The first of the two rescues involved a a 7-meter (23-foot) -long wooden boat filled with 162 migrants, including 17 women and 29 minors, many of them in a cramped area below the deck. The boat had an engine but no system of navigation on it, according to Flavia Conte, rescue coordinator for the Doctors Without Borders rescue ship Geo Barents. The group had spent hours at sea with the boat low in the water. The migrants on board were Syrians and Egyptians. “Many of them were below deck, in the belly of the boat, a place that is even more unsafe as far as ventilation is concerned and the Geo Barents has found people who have died in this part of boats,” Conte told The Associated Press. The second rescue involved 96 people on a similar wooden boat, including nine children, mainly Syrians. The Italian Maritime Authority has told the Geo Barents to take the rescued people to the port of Salerno, near Naples, 400 kilometres from their current location, according to Conte. She said the assigning of a far-off port keeps rescue ships out of the area where they are needed for long periods of time. (AP)