Suspected separatists kill five Thai paramilitary troops

Sep 13, 2009, 14:30 GMT

Pattani, Thailand - Suspected Thai separatists on Sunday ambushed a paramilitary patrol outside the violence-racked southern city of Yala, killing five troopers, police said.

The ambush occurred at 7:50 pm local time near a rubber plantation on the outskirts of Yala, 700 kilometres south of Bangkok, Yala Police Chief Major General Saiyan Kaesaesen said.

Five paramilitary men died in a hail of bullets.

Although the attack was the suspected handiwork of Muslim separatists, Saiyan did not rule out a possible business conflict over drug trafficking as the motive for the attack.

'Only 20 per cent of the violence down here is the work of separatists, the remaining 80 per cent can be blamed on conflicts over illicit businesses such as drug trafficking,' Saiyan told the German Press Agency dpa.

'It's easy to blame everything on the separatists,' said Saiyan, who assumed his post in Yala recently.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces - Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala - have been hit by a fresh wave of powerful bombs and murders this month as political tensions mount in Bangkok over conflicts among politicians about the appointment of a new national police chief and other contentious issues.

An estimated 3,500 people have died in clashes, bombings, revenge killings and beheadings in Thailand's so-called deep south 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.

Besides a long-simmering separatist struggle in the region, which borders Malaysia, the three provinces have a recent history of lucrative but illicit trade in smuggling, drugs and protection rackets.

About 80 per cent of the region's 2 million people are Muslims. Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who lived in the region, some 70,000 have left their homes over the past six 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.