Chanthaburi: A large cache of weapons and explosives was discovered by workers fixing a road near a temple in Tha Mai district yesterday morning.
An excavator operator uncovered a box while working on Chong Uthai Phaisan Road in Ban Map Cha-on.
Inside the box were three M67 hand grenades, 225g of TNT, an M14 anti-personnel landmine and more than 160 rounds of ammunition in good condition.
Bomb squad members, soldiers and police who were alerted to the discovery condoned off the area and took the weapons and explosives to the 11th Border Patrol Police Division to be destroyed.
Phra Suwan Phuriyano, the abbot of Wat Suan Pha Neranchara, said he hired the workers to build an access route to the temple.
The site where the arms cache was found is near Khao Khitchakut mountain in the eastern province of Chanthaburi.
Access to the mountain was blocked on Tuesday after a dispute between two temples over the right to organise an annual festival there.
The festival celebrates a sacred replica of a Buddha footprint on the mountain and the site is considered a holy one.
The dispute was between members of the Wat Pluang monastic committee and a panel of monks from Wat Krathing, the festival's organisers.
Worshippers and Wat Krathing committee members on Tuesday dumped soil on a section of the Ban Pluang route — the road to Khao Khitchakut, where the annual prayer festival was being held.
People from other provinces who had come to join the festival at the holy site were caught off guard by the blockade.
The Wat Krathing committee members were upset after a group of rival monks refused to let them take part in the festivities.
The festival is one of Chanthaburi's most popular events and sees tens of thousands of Thai and foreign Buddhists climb Khao Khitchakut to worship the footprint.
Police yesterday declined to say whether there was a connection between the arms cache and the dispute.