Pattani, Thailand - Suspected separatist insurgents on
Wednesday killed seven soldiers with a bomb detonated under their
truck as they patrolled Rangae district of Narathiwat province, part
of Thailand's troubled majority Muslim deep South, police said.
The explosion occurred at 3 pm near Bongo village, Rangae district
of Narathiwat, 790 kilometres south of Bangkok, near a hilltop where
a Thai patrol surprised a group of insurgents belonging to the Runda
Kampulan Kecil (RKK) group on March 2, killing five of them.
All seven soldiers in the pickup truck were killed. Other bobby
trap bombs and nails placed in the vicinity prevented authorities
from immediately getting to the scene.
'This was an act of revenge for the deaths of their people two
months ago,' said Rangae Police Colonel Manot Anantarikul, blaming
the attack on the RKK, one of a dozen insurgent groups engaged in a
separatist struggle in Thailand's three southernmost provinces -
Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala.
More than 2,100 people have fallen victim to escalating violence
in the region since January 4, 2004, when a group of Muslim militants
successfully raided an army arms depot and stole 300 war weapons.
The daring act sparked a government crackdown that in turn claimed
victims and turned much of the local population - the only majority
Muslim enclave in predominantly Buddhist Thailand - against the
central government.
Attacks on Thai authorities and Thai-Buddhists have increased
since retired army chief General Surayud Chulanont was appointed
prime minister on October 1, and promised to address the conflict
through dialogue and reconciliation.
Surayud, who will lead a group of ministers to the deep South on
Sunday and Monday to assess the situation, maintains that the
insurgents have stepped up their attacks in a desperate effort to
drive a wedge between Thai-Muslims and Thai-Buddhists in the area.
Of the 2 million people living in Thailand's three southernmost
provinces, more than 80 per cent are Muslim.
Thailand insists the conflict is the outgrowth of a long-simmering
separatist struggle, and not the result of religious persecution.
The three provinces constituted an independent Islamic sultanate
known as Pattani for hundreds of years before being conquered by
Bangkok in 1786. The border provinces came under direct rule of the
Thai bureaucracy in 1902.
A separatist struggle took off in the 1950s, fuelled by government
efforts to suppress the local culture and religion in the region but
died down in the 1980s when more liberal measures were adopted.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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