HONG KONG STANDARD
JUNE 4H
73
Six killed as opiurn truck is
ambushed
Drug gang war comki cut off supplies
4.
RIGHTRYNA
.SCUNT.S
NARCOTIC dealers and addicts in Hongkong have got word that their drug supplies could be disrupted in the near future because of an internal war among suppliers in the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos and Thailand.
A large shipment belonging to one of the world's largest racketeers was recently ambushed and stolen by a Tival gang.
Reprisal actions against the ambushers are bound to follow and could result in a temporary stoppage in the supply of drugs from the area which Hongkong's addicts depend on.
The situation could be even more serious for them than the recent major drug hauls by the authorities, reliable sources said. Only yesterday a South Vietnamese navy patrol boat picked up almost a ton of opium floating, in sealed containers in the Gulf of Siam.
It was the second major drug haul off the South Vietnamese coast in just over a month.
NOTORIOUS
More than 100 bags and boxes were spotted floating off Kien Giang Province yesterday.N. The opium joined mor than six tons of raw opium and morphine base now heavily
At least six opium guarded in a Saigon police smugglers were killed and five Warchouse and seized off the other seriously injured in the South Vietnamese coast on incident, according to reports. April 20 on its way to The ambushed smugglers Hongkong.
worked for Lo Usin-min, The April haul was notorious for operating one of considered possibly the world's the world's largest narcotics biggest.
racket in the Golden Triangle.
They were shipping three tons of opium, worth about $1.2 million, to a Thai narcotic racket who had agreed to pay for it in gold bullion.
But drugs seized by the authorities normally amount to only a IWO- or three-week supply each year and smugglers shrug it off as a business risk. The most serious effect on
A rendezvous was fixed addicts is a temporary increase along the Mekong River on in prices.
The unbuch jà a difficult the buyers showed up as well May 21, a truck belonging to
matter.
as a pick-up truck with 11 of Lo's men and three tons of opium, the report said.
The buyers said that they had only enough gold to pay for one-and-a-half tons of opium and that they wouk! have to take up the other half at a later date.
One-and-a-half tons of opium was ferried across the river while the gold was being carried over and the pick-up truck began to return to its base in Burma,
But it was ambushed along the way, six of Lo's men were killed and the rest seriously wounded while the attackers made off with both the opium and the gold.
The report said that a large-scale hunt for the double-crossers is believed to have been ordered by Lo,
The ambush and the resulting hunt could spark off an internal war among the traffickers and seriously affect drug supplies in Southeast Asia.
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