Nine-year-old dies as Thai drug sweep claims 901 lives

The death in a hail of police bullets of the nine-year-old son of a suspected drug dealerhas put Thailand's government on the defensive over a crackdown on the illegal methamphetamine trade.

The campaign has has resulted in 901 deaths of suspected drug dealers over the past three weeks across Thailand. A one-year-old baby was killed yesterday during a drug-related shooting in southern Songkhla province that left his mother seriously wounded.

In Chiang Mai, near the Burmese border, an army officer was killed, the first law enforcer to die during the intensive blitz against drug traffickers since 1 February.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who vowed to break up Thailand's burgeoning speed trade by the end of April, has demanded officials arrest at least 46,000 of the traffickers named on his blacklist. But he has denied a shoot-to-kill policy underlies the scheme.

Some 50 suspected speed dealers have been violently killed ever day for the past month, the Interior Ministry says. The minister, Wan Muhamad Nor Matha, warned that dealers "might vanish without trace". Police statistics scaled back the official death count to 484 victims, and officials say just 22 were killed by police in self-defence. The rest of these deaths are blamed on drug gangs silencing possible informants. Bodies are found shot execution-style, each clutching a weapon in one hand and a bag of pink Yaba pills (methamphetamines) in the other.

The Prime Minister seemed upset by the details of the killing of the nine-year-old. "Officers are not authorised to simply kill people," Mr Thaksin said. "I will hold a meeting with senior officers to send a clear signal that whoever makes a mistake won't be protected."

Chakkapan Srisa-ard, nicknamed "Fluke", was sitting in the back of his parents' car on Sunday night while his father allegedly delivered 6,000 pills to an informant and was handcuffed by police at a fruit market. As his mother tried to speed away in a hail of gunfire, two bullets struck the boy. The police say the car's tinted windows prevented them from seeing the child. They are charged with manslaughter.

The mother, Pornwipa Kerdrungurang, fled and did not attend her son's funeral. She is still missing. The police department sent a spokesman to lay a large wreath at the Buddhist service.

A recent university poll showed 92 per cent approval of Mr Thaksin's tough drugs policy. Yet 70 per cent feared they might be set up or killed by police or drug gangs.

Some police operations seem increasingly bizarre as they go after suspects believed to be major traffickers. Police confiscated 10,000 crocodiles from the farm of a suspected speed syndicate head in central Thailand. on orders from the Anti-Money Laundering Office yesterday. One official said: "We regard these crocodiles as the product of money laundering from the drug trade."

In other raids, authorities seized $9.4m (£6m) worth of assets from suspected dealers – mostly gold, gems, and cash, but including 40 deer, 320 ostriches, 130 head of cattle and dozens of wild boars.

The Thai government has threatened to sack provincial governors who do not meet arrest quotas. Their three million Yaba addicts include children. An estimated one billion pills are consumed each year.