Gunbattle in Thailand kills three

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.