The 16 victims, all tourists vacationing in the border town in conjunction with the Songkran (Thai new year) festival, suffered smoke inhalation in the 8.25am (local time) incident on Friday (April 12).

Sadao deputy police chief Lt Col Winai Sakeeyasatien said the eight Malaysians, aged 25 to 58, were rushed to three hospitals nearby. One of the Malaysians was a woman.

“Some were given outpatient treatment. The cause of the fire is still under investigation,” he said when contacted by Bernama.

It was reported that there were 30 occupants at the 200-room hotel when the fire broke out.

According to witnesses, thick smoke forced guests to clamber out of the hotel’s balconies and windows.

    “I asked Great Britain for the guarantee that Mr Assange will not be extradited to any country in which he could suffer torture or the death penalty,” President Lenin Moreno said in a video message posted on social media.

“The British government has confirmed in writing” that they will meet this requirement, Moreno said.

Assange was arrested in London on a US warrant over his alleged role in a massive leak of military and intelligence documents in 2010, according to the US Justice Department.

Those charges do not carry the death penalty, however. Assange instead faces up to five years in jail on a federal charge of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified US government computer,” the Justice Department said.

    Moreno earlier tweeted that Ecuador was within its “sovereign rights” to withdraw Assange’s asylum “for repeatedly violating international conventions and the protocol of co-habitation.”

Assange has been living at Ecuador’s embassy in London since 2012 when he sought refuge there after being accused of sexual assault in Sweden.

He was arrested by British police who entered the embassy on Thursday after Quito withdrew his asylum.

Rafael Correa, Moreno’s predecessor who was instrumental in granting Assange asylum, slammed the reversal of policy as “a crime.”

“Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget,” tweeted Correa, who now lives in Belgium.

On April 6, several diplomats showed up at Bangkok’s Pathum Wan Police Station to witness Future Forward Party leader, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, being officially charged with sedition.

The ministry’s deputy permanent secretary, who is responsible for bilateral relations, passed this message on to the diplomatic corps between April 10-11, according to a ministry statement.

The senior official separately met ambassadors and representatives from the embassies of France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America, Finland, Belgium and the delegation of the European Union.

In the meeting, he expressed “disappointment and concern” about the presence of diplomats at the police station.

“In particular, the embassies’ action was seen as a show of moral support for Thanathorn as well as taking of sides in Thai domestic politics,” the diplomats were told.

“This action is clearly beyond the functions of a diplomatic mission, an interference in Thailand’s internal affairs, and in breach of Article 41 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The ministry therefore urges the embassies to prevent a recurrence of such actions in the future.”

Despite this request, many embassies later issued statements defending their representatives and their action.

Later the ministry issued a second statement justifying the procedure that will see Thanathorn being tried in a military court – an act that has been criticised by the diplomatic community.

Thailand, like many other countries, including the UK, the US and several European countries, have been using the system of military courts, the statement said.

“Although practices may differ between countries, military courts are not established with the purpose of targeting particular individuals.

“The military courts form part of the judicial system under Chapter X [the courts] of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand, which also includes the Courts of Justice and Administrative Courts.

“The Constitution also affirms the principles that trial and adjudication of cases must be carried out in accordance with the laws and in the name of the monarch, and judges and justices are independent in trial and adjudication of cases, in accordance with the Constitution and laws in the expeditious and fair manner, and without any partiality,” the statement read.

Under the junta’s orders, legal proceedings against persons accused of committing certain offences under the Criminal Code before September 12, 2016 will be subject to the jurisdiction of military courts.

Thanathorn’s allegedly committed the offences in question on June 24, 2015.

Brigitte and Christophe Demassougne originally put their sprawling guest house in Cenac-et-Saint-Julien, around 80 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Perigueux in the Dordogne region, on the market with an estimated value of more than 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million).

The 18th-century residence, known as a Chartreuse, includes stables, a tennis court and a private pool amid lush gardens.

To drum up wider interest they launched an online quiz offering the resort to the lucky winner. After purchasing a 13-euro ticket, contestants were given two questions and shown three objects whose value they had to estimate.

    The not-exactly-brainteasers sought the names of a castle in the northern Perigord region (“Versailles” isn’t the correct answer) and the name of the river that runs through the town of Roque-Gageac — it’s the Dordogne.

The objects were trickier: An antique book of calligraphy, a pair of polished Chelsea boots, and a 18-Karat gold bracelet.

Since its launch on April 1, nearly 20,000 people had signed up, raising 260,000 euros, from as far away as Canada and Australia, as well as Britain where holidaymakers have long favoured the Dordogne region, Brigitte Demassougne told AFP.

On Thursday, however, the couple received a letter from the ARJEL online gaming regulator ordering the competition shut down, citing a 2014 law that forbids games of chance based on individual expertise.

It gave the couple eight days to prove the contrary, and although they will try to prove they acted in good faith, Brigitte Demassougne said she was “pessimistic” about her chances.

She promised that all the players would get their money back.

“People called and wrote to congratulate us and support us, saying ‘Even if we don’t win, you’ve given us a chance to dream!'” she said. “At least it was good for that.”

The General Elections Commission (KPU) has sent a team to Malaysia to investigate as many as 20,000 ballots, including many marked in favour of Indonesian President Joko Widodo, that were found in two locations near the capital Kuala Lumpur.

“This concerns a very sensitive issue and since it happened in another country, we’re doing a very careful investigation,” KPU chief Arief Budiman told a press conference late Thursday.

Recent polls suggest Widodo, 57, has a double-digit lead over challenger Prabowo Subianto, an ex-military general, setting up a repeat of the pair’s contest in 2014, which Widodo narrowly won.

    Indonesia’s opposition has already warned of court challenges and street protests over irregularities, including errors in dates of birth and duplicate identity card numbers, for some 17.5 million registered voters — nearly 10 percent of the electorate.

More than 190 million Indonesians are set to cast a ballot Wednesday in one of the world’s biggest one-day elections, with some two million living overseas also registered to vote, including in Malaysia.

Indonesia’s Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) confirmed that stray ballots marked in Widodo’s favour were found in Malaysia after videos surfaced online that showed people raiding an empty store in Selangor state and unpacking several bags containing marked ballots.

Another video, apparently from another location in Malaysia, showed two women punching holes in ballots, which is how a vote is marked in Indonesia’s elections.

But the agency said the ballots’ authenticity had yet to be confirmed.

“Were those ballots really printed by the KPU? Who did this?” Bawaslu’s Mochammad Afifuddin said in a joint statement with the elections commission.

“We will clarify this and investigate,” he added.

Selangor state police chief Noor Azam Jamaludin said Malaysian authorities were also probing the case.

There are reportedly one million registered Indonesian voters living in Malaysia who are set to cast an early ballot at more than 200 ballot stations on Sunday.

Presidential challenger Subianto’s camp demanded the recall of Rusdi Kirana — a Widodo ally who is Indonesia’s ambassador to Malaysia and co-founder of budget carrier Lion Air — for failing to prevent ballots from going astray.

“It’s embarrassing,” Subianto’s spokesman Irawan Ronodipuro said.

“This breaches the code of ethics and violates the ambassador’s primary role and function. It has defamed the country.”

Widodo gave his thumbs up to the probe, but called on opponents to wait for the investigation’s results before “spreading unfounded rumours”.

    Assange has been living at the embassy in London’s plush Knightsbridge district since 2012 when he sought refuge there after being accused of sexual assault in Sweden — allegations that have since been dropped.

Footage shot by Ruptly, a video news agency, showed a frantic-looking Assange, with a large white beard, being carried down the embassy steps by several men into a police van.

“I can confirm that Julian Assange is now in police custody and rightly facing justice in the UK,” British Home Secretary Sajid Javid said on Twitter.

    “No one is above the law,” he wrote, thanking Ecuador for its “cooperation” in the long-running case.

WikiLeaks accused Ecuador of breaching international law by withdrawing his asylum and said the country’s ambassador to London had “invited” police into the embassy building to carry out the arrest.

“Ecuador has illegally terminated Assange political asylum in violation of international law,” the whistleblowing website said on Twitter.

Russia accused Britain of “strangling freedom” with Assange’s arrest, in a Facebook message by foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

The 47-year-old Australian was due to appear in court later on Thursday. He faces prosecution for breaching the conditions of his bail in Britain in 2012.

He had refused to leave the embassy, fearing ultimate extradition to the United States where WikiLeaks said he faces charges over his website publishing huge caches of hacked State Department and Pentagon files.

WikiLeaks had warned last week that a revocation of Assange’s asylum could happen within “hours to days”, citing sources in Ecuador.

– ‘Truman Show’ in embassy –

WikiLeaks on Wednesday had claimed that it was being blackmailed by “dubious characters” who had obtained security camera footage of Assange inside the embassy.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, accused Ecuador authorities of gathering the images, which he said then found their way into the hands of a group in Spain, who were demanding $3 million (2.7 million euros) not to publish them.

The documents include thousands of photographs and gigabytes of video footage showing Assange meeting with lawyers and visitors and of him receiving a medical check-up.

“Since (President Lenin) Moreno took power in Ecuador (in 2017), Julian Assange has been living in a Truman Show type situation” with constant surveillance, Hrafnsson claimed.

The editor also accused embassy staff of photocopying a legal document belonging to Assange’s lawyer Aitor Martinez.

WikiLeaks believes that the United States is working with Ecuador to extradite Assange to face charges, and that the embassy documents were “quite likely shared with the Trump administration”, although it offered no proof of this.

Ecuador had said on Tuesday it was reassessing Assange’s asylum claim.

The clips, produced by the Chinese, German and US embassies, depict members of staff in bright costumes performing traditional Thai dance, spraying each other with water or generally enjoying themselves.

Chinese Ambassador to Thailand Lyu Jian is seen saying “we wish you all prosperity and a happy Songkran Day” in Thai. (https://www.facebook.com/pg/ChineseEmbassyinBangkok/videos/)

The German Ambassador Georg Schmidt is seen making his way down embassy grounds on a scooter, armed with a water gun.

The clip from the US embassy shows members of staff, both Thai and American, performing the rum wong, or Thai traditional dance, to the beat of traditional drums.

These “Happy Songkran” video clips have been posted on each embassy’s social-media network, including Facebook and Twitter.