{"id":171885,"date":"2015-12-04T12:04:20","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T12:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=171885"},"modified":"2015-12-04T12:04:20","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T12:04:20","slug":"is-in-thailand-to-target-russians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=171885","title":{"rendered":"IS ‘in Thailand to target Russians"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thai police say they were warned by Moscow that 10 Syrians working for the so-called Islamic State (IS) entered Thailand in October to target Russians.<\/p>\n

A leaked Thai police memo says the information was passed by Russia’s intelligence agency. More than 1.5 million Russians visited in 2013.<\/p>\n

But Thai police say they have not been able to confirm the presence of these Syrians and officials called for calm.<\/p>\n

Russia began air strikes against IS in Syria at the end of September.<\/p>\n

An IS-linked group also claimed it brought down the Russian airliner which crashed in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula in October, killing all 224 people on board.<\/p>\n

‘Everything is safe’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The leaked memo, marked “urgent” and dated 27 November, was from a commander of Thailand’s Special Branch and was sent to police units.<\/p>\n

It says Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had told Thai police that the Syrian militants had entered the country between 15 and 31 October to target Russians.<\/p>\n

The memo reads: “They travelled separately. Four went to Pattaya, two to Phuket, two to Bangkok and the other two to an unknown location.”<\/p>\n

The plan was to target “Russians and Russia’s alliance with Thailand” it says.<\/p>\n

The memo calls for increased security around possible targets.<\/p>\n

\"Loy<\/span><\/figure>\n

Pattaya and Phuket are both popular resort destinations for Russian tourists, and Christmas and New Year are peak seasons.<\/p>\n

But Thai authorities said they had still to determine whether the Syrians had even entered the country.<\/p>\n

A deputy spokesman for the Thai police Songpol Wattanachai confirmed the memo was authentic, but added: “So far it’s only intelligence news that still needs to be proved… we have no proof if they are here for real or not.”<\/p>\n

National Security Council Chief General Thawip Netniyom said: “We have yet to find any unusual movement. Everything is safe, rest assured.”<\/p>\n

Immigration Bureau commissioner Nathathorn Prausoontorn told Reuters news agency that of the 231 Syrians who had entered in October, only 21 remain and there were “no irregularities” among them.<\/p>\n

In August, a bomb at a Bangkok temple that killed 20 people was the first major attack on a tourist target in Thailand.<\/p>\n

Two Muslim Uighurs were arrested and charged, although authorities say they are linked to people-smuggling gangs, not Islamist militants.<\/p>\n

But the BBC’s south-east Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, in Bangkok, says there are outstanding arrest warrants for a further 15 suspects for that bombing who are still at large.<\/p>\n

There is a widely-held belief that it was carried out in retaliation for Thailand’s controversial decision in July to repatriate more than 100 Uighur asylum-seekers to China, he adds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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–<\/h3>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thai police say they were warned by Moscow that 10 Syrians working for the so-called Islamic State (IS) entered Thailand in October to target Russians. A leaked Thai police memo says the information was passed by Russia’s intelligence agency. More than 1.5 million Russians visited in 2013. But Thai police say they have not been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":171886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-171885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/171886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}