Author: Richard Lloyd Parry
Publication: The Times
Date: March 15, 2007
URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1517066.ece
Nine people, including four women and two
teenage girls, were shot through the head yesterday in one of the most shocking
attacks so far in Thailand's worsening Islamic insurgency.
The victims were passengers on a commercial
minibus in the far south, where more than 2,000 people have been murdered
over the past three years. They were travelling from Yala province to the
city of Hat Yai, in neighbouring Songkhla, when they were stopped by gunmen
who had placed logs across the road.
"When the bus slowed down, they opened
fire," a policeman at the scene said. "The bus veered off the road,
and then the militants got on and shot the passengers in the head at point-blank
range."
Police arrived to find the minibus in a ditch,
with the victims slumped in their seats. The driver, who was shot in the face,
and one passenger survived. A small roadside bomb exploded near by soon afterwards,
apparently placed in order to hinder any pursuit of the attackers.
According to the police, the dead included
teachers, students, traders, farmers and a soldier. All were Buddhists, apart
from the Muslim driver.
Victims of the three-year Islamic insurgency
have included monks, teachers and soldiers from the Buddhist north of the
country, as well as Muslim villagers and many real or alleged insurgents killed
by the security forces.
On average, somebody is murdered most days
in southern Thailand. In the past week a Burmese migrant worker has been beheaded,
schools have been burnt down and a bomb has exploded at a market. But even
by such dismal standards yesterday's attack was rare in its scale and brutality.
The security forces seem to have made little
progress in stamping out the insurgency, or even identifying its leaders and
goals. It is assumed that the aim of the attacks is to drive out Buddhist
migrants and establish the three southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Yala
and Pattani as an independent sultanate - which they were until they were
incorporated into Siam a century ago.
But there have been no manifestos or demands,
and there are no active insurgent websites or spokesmen.