The 10-minute gunfight took place about a kilometre from the Thai border when the Naresuan Task Force encountered an unidentified armed force.

After the clash, the authorities found the dead body of one of the drug smugglers, said to be ethnic Wa, and 200,000 speed pills inside an abandoned backpack, and an AK-47 assault rifle.

Maj-Gen Surachet Chaiwong, the task force chief, said the gang consisted of 4-5 members.

Meanwhile, an anti-drug centre under the Third Army assigned to oversee the northern border, has intensified security in Tak, Mae Hong Son, and Wiang Haeng district in Chiang Mai along the 1,020-kilometre-long border.

The security beef-up was ordered following a sharp rise in the trafficking of drugs into the country recently.

In a separate incident, police arrested two traffickers in a sting operation in Chiang Mai yesterday.

Chatree Chantong, 46, a Mae Rim district resident, and Ja-ea Jalorbu, a member of the ethnic Lisu tribe in Chiang Dao district, were detained after they delivered 38,000 speed pills to undercover police posing as drug purchasers on the Chiang Mai-Mae Taeng road.

Ja-ea confessed to being a member of a drug network controlled by a deputy commander of the South Wa State and a supervisor of a drug storage facility in Burma’s Nakawngmu village opposite Chiang Dao district of Chiang Mai.