Pattani, Thailand - An hour-long gun battle Saturday
between Thai security forces and suspected separatists in the
conflict-torn southern province of Yala left three dead, army
officials said.
The victims were a soldier, a policeman and an insurgent.
Acting on a tipoff, a combined force of about 30 Thai soldiers and
police attacked a house in Bannang Sata district of Yala province,
750 kilometres south of Bangkok, where separatists were known to be
hiding.
The ensuing gun battle lasted an hour, leaving three dead, Army
Major Saksin Kransanoh, commander of the Special Task Force in the
deep South, said.
Another soldier received a head wound and was hospitalised. Four
to five insurgents managed to flee the house and escape.
Saksin said attacks and reprisals had increased in the area
since the still unexplained June 8 attack on a mosque in the Cho
Ai-rong district of Narathiwat Province, that left 11 people dead and
13 wounded.
An estimated 3,500 people have died in clashes, bombings, revenge
killings and beheadings in the troubled deep South region, comprising
Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces, over the past five and a half
years.
The insurgents, an amorphous group of various Muslim militants
fighting for greater autonomy or complete independence from the
predominantly Buddhist state, have adopted eye-for-an-eye tactics to
avenge any show of force by the authorities.
Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who lived in the region, about
70,000 have left since separatists raided an army depot in January
2004, killing four soldiers and making off with 300 weapons, leading
to an escalation of the region's long-simmering separatist struggle.
The incident sparked a series of brutal government crackdowns,
which turned many of the area's 2 million people, 80 per cent of whom
are Muslim, against the central government.
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.
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