Taiwan restaurant fire leaves 3 Thai workers dead

Taipei - An explosion and fire caused by a brawl between Vietnamese and Thai migrant workers in a Taiwan restaurant Friday left three people dead and seven injured.

The fight started at a seafood restaurant in Kuishian township in northern Taiwan in the early hours of Friday after the Vietnamese group complained that the Thais were singing too loudly in the restaurant's karaoke room.Officials said they believe one Vietnamese man snatched a gas tank from the kitchen, turned it on and ignited it, before throwing it into the karaoke room, causing an explosion.

Firemen found three bodies and rushed seven injured people to hospital. While the fire department said all the dead and injured are Thai migrant workers, police said their nationalities have not been confirmed.

"The injured suffer from second- to third-degree burns and are being treated in the intensive care unit. We are not sure if they are all Thais because they have tubes stuck into their noses (to help them breathe, and cannot talk," Yeh Fu-kui, a police officer at the Kuishan police station, said.

"The three bodies are badly charred so that it is hard to determine their nationality and gender," he added.

Yeh said a Thai worker who went to the restaurant to join his friends reported the fire.

Taiwan has imported some 300,000 foreign workers to ease its labour shortage. Most of them come from Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. dpa