Weerachai Wongput

June 21, 2004 - Weerachai Wongput, 37, a foreign worker from the Nong Han District of the northeastern province of Udon Thani in Thailand, died after being hit by shrapnel from a mortar shell fired by terrorists into greenhouses in Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip.

The mortar was fired by Palestinians trying to divert attention from an attempt to infiltrate the settlement. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Wongput's wife, Watcharee, told the Bangkok daily The Nation that she expects his body to be returned home for burial. "I just talked to him on Saturday," she recalled. "He said he would come back within the next five months. I was so glad he was coming back -- I never thought he wouldn't come back alive."

Wongput was one of 328 Thai workers in the Gaza Strip out of some 30,000 Thai workers in Israel. In response to his death, the Thai Labor Ministry has ordered the evacuation of all remaining Thai workers from Gaza.