Southern violence surges

Yala - A bomb exploded yesterday at a busy market, wounding 28 people, seven of them seriously, while two public school teachers were shot dead in next-door Narathiwat province.

The homemade bomb detonated by remote control exploded at a packed food stall in Muang Yala district.

Police believed a bomber placed the device under one of the stalls on Monday night and waited until customers packed the market before detonating it.

Seven of those hurt were in serious condition, said Pol Lt Col Jeerasit Lomae.

In Narathiwat, two public school teachers were murdered, said Pol Lt-Col Thanapol Meechai.

At least two assailants hidden in the brush stepped out onto a narrow village road in Rueso district and shot them with pistols while they were riding motorcycles home, he said.

The two victims were in a group of six teachers guarded by a village defence volunteer, but they had fallen behind the others, he said.

It is normal practice in the South for teachers to have security escorts to and from school.

More than 2,600 people have been killed in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, and some parts of nearby Songkhla, since the Islamic separatist insurgency flared up in January 2004.

An insurgent suspect was killed in an exchange of gunfire with 50 security officers in a longgong orchard in Yala's Yaha district.

It followed a tip-off that about nine armed men had turned up at a local market to buy food and then disappeared into the orchard.

The security patrol later spotted armed men in camouflage uniforms walking in the orchard.

Both sides opened fire and after a brief exchange they suspects retreated into a rubber plantation nearby.

One man identified later as Dorlamae Yasi, 26, was found dead at the scene. An HK-33 rifle and a 30cm PVC pipe containing a home-made bomb were found near his body.

In Narathiwat, police took a member of an active rebel cell to a crime scene to reenact a bomb attack which wounded a police officer in Tak Bai district.

Mahama Madeng, 26, of the Runda Kumpulan Kecil, and five accomplices allegedly planted the bomb which exploded under the pick-up truck of Pol Sub-Lt Seri Hayeeding, a deputy crime suppression inspector of Tak Bai district on Oct 26, 2005.

The officer sustained shrapnel wounds.

Meanwhile, relatives of three men apprehended shortly after they left the military-run vocational training programme and returned home have asked the provincial courts in Yala and Pattani for their immediate release.

Mayakee Manputae, 23, was arrested by police in Yala on Saturday , while Nisae Hayeetalae, 40, and Abdulroman Dueramae, 51, were apprehended on Sunday in Pattani.

The three men were among participants in the army-supervised vocational training programme for individuals with suspected links to the southern insurgency.

The programme, set to end later this month, is being run at army camps in Ranong, Chumphon and Surat Thani.

The courts in those provinces recently ruled the training was voluntary and participants were free to leave the programme if they wanted to.

The three men left the camp and returned home only to be arrested because they were banned from entering Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and parts of Songkhla where martial law has been imposed.

The Pattani provincial court will decide today whether to accept for hearing the relatives' request for the release of Mr Nisae and Mr Abdulroman.

The Yala court admitted Mr Mayakee's case for consideration. The policemen who apprehended Mr Mayakee were called to testify.

The Yala court has set tomorrow for the examining of documentary evidence to determine if the police arrest of Mr Mayakee was legal. (Bangkok Post, AP)

http://www.bangkokpost.net/topstories/tops...s.php?id=123345

Hard to understand how anyone would be still teaching down there.