May 9, 2007, 10:19 GMT
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.
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