Suspected separatists kill four in southern Thailand

Sep 6, 2009, 9:22 GMT

Bangkok - Suspected Muslim separatists killed four people in Thailand's southern Yala province over the weekend in a stepped-up wave of violence in the area, police reports said Sunday.

Three gunmen using M-16 and AK47 assault rifles on Sunday gunned down 61-year-old village headman Waedaloh Waeuseng, his daughter Yaleeya Waeuseng, 35, and his son-in-law Mahama Longsa, 42, in Yaha district of Yala, 700 kilometres south of Bangkok.

Police blamed the slayings on southern separatist insurgents, the Bangkok Post reported.

On Saturday, suspected separatists shot dead rubber tapper Mahadee Arwae, 38, on a rural road in Betong district, Yala, and wounded his wife Jehye Sareh, 43, who was rushed to hospital.

On Friday, a bomb exploded outside a crowded restaurant in Yala city, killing one policeman and injuring 12 people.

It was the latest of several car bombings targeting on restaurants frequented by Buddhists in Thailand's deep South. On Thursday, a bomb planted in a motorcycle went off outside a restaurant in Pattani, killing one person and wounding 29.

On August 25, a bomb exploded outside a restaurant in Pattani, 670 kilometres south of Bangkok, injuring 26 civilians.

'The insurgents are targeting restaurants frequented by Thai Buddhists in an effort to drive them out of the region,' Yala's police chief, Major General Sayan Krasaesaen, said.

An estimated 3,500 people have died in clashes, bombings, revenge killings and beheadings in the deep South, which comprises Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces, since Muslim militants raided an army depot in January 2004, killing four soldiers and making off with 300 weapons, leading to an escalation of the region's separatist struggle.

About 80 per cent of the region's 2 million people are Muslims. Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who lived in the region, about 70,000 have left their homes over the past five and a half years.

Although the region, which centuries ago was the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani, was conquered by Bangkok about 200 years ago, it has never wholly submitted to Thai rule.

Analysts said the region's Muslim population, the majority of whom speak a Malay dialect and follow Malay customs, feels alienated from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state.