According to Reuters, local police and newspapers have reported the defrocking of five Thai Buddhist monks after they got into a brawl with monks from a nearby temple.

The Manager newspaper reported that the street fight came after years of antagonism between monks from the two temples who had often exchanged curses, insults and rude gestures as they collected alms on different sides of a road.

"When an ordinary person is given a middle-finger sign, he will be mad. So am I," the paper quoted one of the defrocked monks, Boonlert Boonpan, as saying after the brawl in the northeastern state of Nong Khai Monday.

Boonlert said he usually carried a knuckle-duster in his shoulder bag during the morning collection of alms on which Bhuddist monks depend.

Wut Pomraksa, head of Nong Khai police station, told Reuters that Boonlert and the four other monks, all aged between 15 and 28, were each fined 1,000 baht ($25) by police for public brawling and were defrocked by senior monks.