Thai commandos early this morning stormed a western provincial hospital at Ratchaburi and fought a fierce gun battle with a group of Burmese Karen guerrillas holed up in the complex with hundreds of hostages.
Nine rebels were killed and another was injured. All the hostages are safe, Lieut Gen Thaveep Suwannasingh, first army region commander said.
"All the hostages are safe," the government spokesman, Mr Akapol Sorasuchart said, adding that police had no choice but to raid the hospital in Ratchaburi, 120 km west of Bangkok.
He said of the 16 gunmen, six were missing and were believed to have fled the hospital.
Witnesses said at least 20 explosions rocked the compound as six truckloads of commandos rushed into the hospital where the attackers - from a guerrilla band led by 12-year-old twins - had held up to 700 medical staff and patients hostage since Monday morning.
Machine gun fire and at least 20 explosions was heard inside the compound. This was followed by sporadic firing.
Commandos searched the building and the compound for the gunmen as an army helicopter circled overhead using spotlights to search for any escapees, witnesses added.
The gunmen, from "God's Army", a Karen guerrilla faction led by 12-year-old twins, had freed over 70 hostages, most of them sick, elderly, women and children from about the 700 said by the authorities to be trapped in the hospital. Seventeen other hostages escaped from the compound by a back door on Monday.
The hospital attackers from "God's Army", a breakaway faction of Burma's Christian Karen National Union guerrillas, seized the hospital and hostages to demand relief from bloody border fighting that had hit their jungle base at the Burma border.
The group is about 100-strong and includes Burmese students and child soldiers. It was not known if the twin leaders - Johnny and Luther Htoo - took part in the attack.
Witnesses said about 10 guerrillas had fired repeatedly with automatic weapons after breaking into the 770-bed provincial hospital in a hijacked school bus on Monday.