Malaysia releases five Thai detainees

BANGKOK, April 21 (TNA) - The Internal Security Operations Command or ISOC, Region 4, says that five Thai men who were arrested and detained by Malaysian soldiers on April 17 have been released back to Thailand safely. ISOC Region 4 Spokesman Colonel Pramote Promin told reporters of the update, acknowledging that newly-appointed Commanding General of the 4th Army Area Command Lieutenant General Walit Rojanapakdi had ordered Commander of the Army Infantry Division 5 Major General Ruangsak Suwannaka to assign a senior officer to clarify with the Malaysian side that the five Thai men unintentionally trespassed into the Malaysian soil. The spokesman stated that the Malaysian authorities later released the five Thai detainees, who live in Than To District of Yala Province in the Thai far South, back to Thailand last Saturday afternoon. According to a village chief in Than To, the five Thai nationals were looking for their friends who had gone inside a jungle near the Thai-Malaysian border for hunting and they then went astray and walked more than three kilometres deep inside the Malaysian territory. (TNA)