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Women and children shot in bus massacre

Women and children shot in bus massacre

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.


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