BANGKOK (AP) — Survivors and family members of victims of a deadly bar fire in Bangkok visited a nearby police station on Wednesday to seek compensation, gather belongings and share statements from the blaze.
The fire, which broke out on Sunday night, killed at least 32 people and left more than 70 injured, 15 of whom are still in critical condition, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.
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Natthaphong Lakhorn, a 26-year-old survivor of the Rong Beer Na Ladprao bar fire, speaks to journalists outside the Phahonyothin Police Station in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Anton L. Delgado)
In this image made from video provided by Instagram handle @jackfanchan, people move around a fire at a bar in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, July 13, 2026. (@jackfanchan via AP)
Bottles are seen sitting atop burned tables inside the music bar where a fire killed a number of people in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)
A coffin of a victim in a music bar fire is prepared to be handed over to the relatives, unseen, at a police hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A relative of a victim in a music bar fire pays respect to the victim's body at a police hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A man puts flowers outside the music bar where a fire killed a number of people in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)
The cause of the fire at the Rong Beer Na Ladprao bar is still under investigation.
Most of the people who were killed were found trapped in windowless bathrooms, where they may have sought to escape the flames, police said.
Wiroon Supasingsiripreecha, chief of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, told reporters Wednesday that most of the victims died from smoke inhalation, while a few died from burn injuries.
Natthaphong Lakhorn, 26, was at the beer hall on the night of the fire with four companions. He was sitting near the stage when the fire broke out.
He recounted seeing white smoke coming from the stage, which he at first thought was an effect from dry ice before realizing it was the start of a fire.
“When the fire broke, I just ran, and then all power went out,” said Natthaphong, who said that one of his companions, a relative, died in the fire. “It was so hectic.”
On Wednesday, Natthaphong went to the Phahonyothin Police Station in Bangkok to give a statement. Photos of personal belongings, like smartphones, left behind the bar on the night of fire adorned the walls.
Bandages covered both of Natthaphong’s ears and part of his forehead. Before registering with the police, he said that he plans to seek compensation for these injuries.
Natthaphong said he escaped through the back door of the bar near the bathrooms, and that there was a security guard there who was using a flashlight to lead people out, contradicting reports from police that the door was not used.
Kanticha Singkhon, 25, was at the police station to pick up a handbag and other personal belongings of her mother, who died in the fire.
With her mother gone, Kanticha said she is now responsible for her younger brother.
“I want them (the owners of the bar) to be the one reaching out to the families. Rather than having us come to the police station ourselves because they (family members of victims) would be going back to their hometowns by now,” she said. “They won’t have time, because each victim came from far away.”
A lawyer representing the bar owners told local media that survivors and family members will initially receive 10,000 baht (approximately $300) in compensation.
“It’s not enough money for a funeral — I had to take a loan to arrange my mom’s funeral,” Kanticha said. “I have not had any financial arrangements, and no one has contacted me.”
A previous version of this article included an outdated figure of 24 people in critical condition. It has been corrected to use the most figure of 15.
Natthaphong Lakhorn, a 26-year-old survivor of the Rong Beer Na Ladprao bar fire, speaks to journalists outside the Phahonyothin Police Station in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, July 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Anton L. Delgado)
In this image made from video provided by Instagram handle @jackfanchan, people move around a fire at a bar in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, July 13, 2026. (@jackfanchan via AP)
Bottles are seen sitting atop burned tables inside the music bar where a fire killed a number of people in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)
A coffin of a victim in a music bar fire is prepared to be handed over to the relatives, unseen, at a police hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A relative of a victim in a music bar fire pays respect to the victim's body at a police hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A man puts flowers outside the music bar where a fire killed a number of people in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. airstrikes targeting Iran have killed more than 30 people in “recent days,” an Iranian government spokesperson said Wednesday.
The comment from Fatemeh Mohajerani came as a Health Ministry spokesperson said more than 260 people had been wounded in overnight strikes in Iran.
It wasn’t immediately clear what time period Mohajerani was referring to.
Iran during the war with the United States and Israel has only sporadically offered full casualty statistics.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. military early Wednesday reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports over Tehran’s attacks on ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, sparking new strikes on nations hosting American forces as an interim deal to end the war further unraveled.
Days of retaliatory strikes across the Middle East by Iran — and both nations’ attempts to assert control of the waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas trade passes during peacetime — threaten to push the region back to all-out war.
In Iran, more than 260 people were wounded in this round of overnight strikes alone, according to the Health Ministry, suggesting an intensification in the bombing.
The U.S. first imposed the blockade in mid-April and then lifted it in mid-June, a day after signing the interim deal that set a 60-day period for negotiations over issues like Iran’s nuclear program, but talks have stalled as fighting over the strait has intensified.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened Wednesday to halt all energy exports from the Middle East over the blockade.
“The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one,” it said.
When U.S. President Donald Trump announced the return of the blockade Monday, he also said he would impose a 20% fee on ships passing through the strait. But he dropped the plan to collect fees hours before resuming the blockade, citing requests from allies in the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. carried out another wave of strikes as it reimposed the blockade, striking dozens of targets over seven hours, the U.S. military’s Central Command said Wednesday.
Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry, gave Wednesday's casualty figure, without specifying how many people had been killed. Kermanpour's figures reported far more people injured than in any other round of recent violence between Iran and the U.S.
Authorities offered no immediate explanation, though initial local reports suggested a significant strike hit Iran's southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province on the Gulf of Oman.
Missile alert warnings went out in Bahrain and Kuwait early Wednesday morning as they faced incoming Iranian fire, something that’s been a daily occurrence, further straining a ceasefire in the war. Jordan also said it shot down three incoming Iranian missiles. Iran claimed attacks on the three nations.
U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads Central Command, said in a statement that Iran had launched dozens of missiles and drones at neighboring Gulf Arab countries.
“U.S. forces are holding Iran accountable for unwarranted aggression that continues to endanger innocent lives,” Cooper said.
There are at least 19 U.S. warships in the Arabian Sea, including two aircraft carriers and an amphibious assault ship with more than 1,000 Marines aboard. Central Command also said in a social media post that there are “hundreds of military aircraft operating across the Middle East.”
When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively shut the passage by attacking and threatening ships. That sent the price of oil, fertilizer and other goods soaring.
Iran has more recently attacked ships moving through the strait on a route near Oman overseen by the U.S. military that is outside Tehran’s control, setting off the recent violence. The U.S. has threatened to reopen the strait by force — but experts say that would require a much bigger armada if not tens of thousands of ground troops.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, criticized America’s ongoing attacks targeting his country.
“The U.S. is the aggressor, not the victim,” he wrote to the world body’s leader, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Trump said Tuesday that he was called by the region’s “kings and emirs,” who suggested an alternate arrangement to charging ships fees to pass through the strait like the president proposed a day earlier.
“They said we’d love to do it a different way. We’d love to invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars,” Trump told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office.
Trump said he preferred that arrangement to charging tolls “because I don’t think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait.”
It was unclear if the investment deals would be new commitments relative to what Trump announced after a visit last year to the Middle East.
Trump’s plan to charge fees would have been a change to longstanding American policy and a departure from U.S. promises that the strait would remain open to all without tolls.
Trump told Fox News Channel on Tuesday night that more U.S. strikes against Iran were coming over the next two days and that bridges and power plants could be targets by next week unless negotiations resume. Already, the U.S. has struck at least one bridge.
“You better make a deal, or you’re not going to have anything left,” Trump warned.
U.S. Central Command said it struck several areas in Iran earlier Tuesday; Tehran acknowledged the strikes but provided no overall casualty or damage assessments.
Hours after the U.S. said it ended its strikes, the Iranian city of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf was hit in at least four locations, the IRNA news agency reported. Explosions in the southwestern city of Ahvaz and the southern port city of Bandar Abbas also were reported by Iranian state media Tuesday night.
The attacks again raised the possibility that Gulf Arab states were retaliating against Iran without discussing it in public.
Kuwait separately said an Iranian attack wounded four members of its navy Tuesday and set a building on fire.
Under the interim deal, Iran agreed that passage through the strait would remain free of charge for 60 days — but the agreement left open what would happen after. Iran asserts it has the right to manage traffic and potentially charge fees. The U.S. has disputed that.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, briefly topped $87 early Tuesday, still well below the nearly $120 reached at the height of the war. The price dipped to $78 in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement that he had changed course.
Regional mediators meanwhile are still trying to get the United States and Iran back to the negotiating table.
Three boys play in the shallow waters of the Strait of Hormuz, as a plume of smoke rises from an explosion in the background, off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Monday, July 13, 2026. (Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP)
Mourners chant slogan as one of them holds a poster of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei in a ceremony commemorating the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Imam Khomeini Mosalla Grand Mosque in Tehran, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
