TEHRAN (Iran News) –Speaking in a meeting with economic activists in Shiraz, Iran’s southern province of Fars, he noted that the Thai Embassy in Iran is after developing and expanding trade and economic relations with the Islamic Republic and with its different provinces.

He emphasized that tourism is one of the sectors in which the Thai government has established good relations with Iranian provinces.

The commercial attaché of the Thai Embassy pointed to his country’s need for Iranian high-quality products including steel, technical and engineering services, dairy industries and aquaculture products and said Iran has other economic advantages as well and so the embassy is after establishing economic ties with the different Iranian provinces, IRNA reported.

The collision happened around 50km east of the capital Bangkok as the bus passengers were on their way to a temple in Chachoengsao province for a ceremony to mark the end of Buddhist Lent, said a district police chief.

“The death toll we have so far is 17,” said the police official, adding that the accident occurred at around 8am, AFP reported.

Provincial governor Maitree Tritilanond told reporters that so far about 29 people were injured.

Early images by rescue workers showed gnarled metal and debris, with bodies lying by the train tracks and people’s belongings scattered.

The bus was overturned on its side, the top of it ripped off, and rescue workers said a crane was needed to lift it.

The number of casualties and injured is expected to rise.

Such deadly accidents are common in Thailand, which regularly tops lists of the world’s most lethal roads, with speeding, drunk driving and weak law enforcement all contributing factors.

According to a 2018 report by the World Health Organization, Thailand has the second-highest traffic fatality rate in the world.

Though a majority of the victims are motorcyclists, bus crashes involving groups of tourists and migrant laborers often grab headlines.

In March 2018, at least 18 people were killed and dozens wounded when a bus carrying people returning from a holiday in north-eastern Thailand swerved off the road and smashed into a tree.

“Down with feudalism, long live the people,” was one of the chants.

Protests have been building since mid-July to call for the removal of the government, a new constitution and elections. They have also broken a long-standing taboo by criticizing the monarchy of King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Police said at least 5,000 people had gathered at the campus of Thammasat University, long seen as a hotbed of opposition to the military and royalist establishment, and scene of a massacre of protesters in 1976.

Under light rain, protesters spilled onto Sanam Luang, a public space opposite the Grand Palace where state ceremonies are traditionally held.

“Today the people will demand back their power,” Arnon Nampa, a human rights lawyer who has emerged as a leading figure in the protest movement, said on Twitter, Reuters reported.

Sept. 19 is the anniversary of the coup against the populist then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. Among the protesters were many of his red shirt followers, veterans of clashes a decade ago with pro-establishment yellow shirts.

“I’m here to fight for the future of my children and grandchildren. I hope that by the time I die, they will become free,” said 68-year-old Tasawan Suebthai, a redshirt with amulets round her neck to ward off bullets.

So far the protests have been peaceful. The biggest to date drew more than 10,000 people last month, but organizers expect more this time.

Thai politics has for years been marked by challenges to the royalist and military establishment by politicians backed by poor urban and rural voters, and more recently by the student protesters.

The military, which proclaims itself the defender of the country’s core institutions, in particular the monarchy, has stepped in to overthrow civilian governments numerous times, most recently in 2014, citing the need to maintain stability.

Prayuth has said the government would allow protests as a form of free speech but that demands for reform of the monarchy were not acceptable.

“We are fighting to put the monarchy in the right place, not to abolish it,” one protest leader, Panupong “Mike” Jadnok, told the crowd.

A 20-year-old student, who gave her name only as Waan for fear of reprisals, said it was time to reform the monarchy. “It’s a problem that’s been swept under the rug for so long. This must end right here.”

Protesters demand the scrapping of a lese majeste law against criticism of the monarchy. They also seek to reduce the king’s constitutional powers and his control over the palace fortune and units of the army.

On Thursday, Prayuth warned the protesters against raising the risks of spreading the novel coronavirus and urged them to put the health crisis before politics.

Protesters jeered when a police officer told a group of them that they could only stay for an hour because of the risk of transmitting the virus. Police said they were deploying 10,000 officers on Saturday.

Following favorable results in trials on primates, the next step is to manufacture doses for human trials, said Kiat Ruxrungtham, director of the Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University vaccine development program, Reuters reported.

“At first we were going to send them in June, but it was not easy to plan everything,” Kiat told a news conference.

There are no approved vaccines for the virus that causes COVID-19, but 19 candidates are being trailed in humans globally. China is leading the race, with an experimental vaccine by Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

Thailand’s first facility should complete production in October and send the products to a second facility, which should finish by November, he said. Originally the earliest target was September, but Kiat said not enough vaccine can be ready by then.

Facilities in San Diego and Vancouver will produce 10,000 doses for the trials for 5,000 people. The first group, aged 18 to 60, will receive different doses of the vaccine, he said.

The trials will not accept volunteers “until we receive approval from the Thai Food and Drug Administration and an ethics committee,” Kiat said.

Thai company BioNet-Asia is preparing its facilities for large-scale manufacturing if the trials prove successful, he said.

“If everything goes according to plan, the coronavirus vaccine will be ready for Thailand in the third or fourth quarter next year,” Kiat said.

Thailand on Sunday had a total of 3,217 confirmed infections, with no local transmissions reported in over a month, and 58 COVID-19 deaths.