18 Thai Schools Set Aflame, 4 Soldiers Killed

[george]

18 Thai schools set aflame, 4 soldiers killed

BANGKOK : Unidentified assailants set fire to 18 schools and stormed a military camp, killing four soldiers, in near simultaneous raids in southern Thailand Sunday, an official said.

The attacks took place around the Muslim-dominated southern province of Narathiwat , said military spokesman Lt Gen Phalangun Krahan.

He said there were no reports of casualties in the school fires. But the assailants shot and killed four soldiers when they raided a military camp in Narathiwat, taking 103 assault rifles.

No other details were immediately available about the attacks, the number of people involved, or their identities. Police were investigating the raids.

Narathiwat is one of the four Muslim-majority provinces in Thailand , which is predominantly Buddhist.

Once a hotbed of a separatist insurgency, the south has seen an upsurge of attacks on government-linked targets in recent years.

--AP 2004-01-04

[george]

Update:

Four killed, 18 schools burned in raids - Thai Army

BANGKOK - Four Thai soldiers were killed when robbers stormed a weapons depot and 18 schools were burned down in a series of attacks in a predominantly Muslim province in southern Thailand, the army said on Sunday.

Colonel Somkuan Saengpattaranetr told Reuters about 30 armed bandits attacked the army depot in Narathiwat, 1,150 km (720 miles) south of Bangkok, around 1:30 a.m. (1830 GMT) on Sunday.

"They killed four guards and ran away with some rifles and pistols," Somkuan said. "We don't know who they are. We are investigating that."

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's cut short a beach holiday to call an urgent meeting with security agencies to assess the situation, chief government spokesman Jakkrapob Penkhair told Reuters.

A state-run MCOT radio quoted an education official in Narathiwat as saying most schools were set on fire by mosquito coils put on petrol-soaked sacks.

The fires, all early on Sunday, could not be extinguished because nails planted around the schools stopped fire brigade vehicles from getting close enough, Pirach Saengthong was quoted by the radio as saying.

There were no immediate reports of injuries from the fires.

Security agencies usually blamed previous attacks in five southernmost provinces -- Songkhla, Satun, Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani, bordering Malaysia -- on bandits who once wanted to turn the area into a separate Muslim state.

But the majority of separatists were now extortionists or gangsters running illegal businesses along the porous mountainous Thai-Malaysian border, the agenices say.

Six million of predominantly Buddhist Thailand's 63 million people are Muslims, most of who live in the five southern provinces.

--AP 2004-01-04

[george]

Update:

SCHOOL ATTACKS: 'Our morale is almost gone'

Educators, students lament 'inhumane' violence, express concern for the future

Arson attacks at 20 schools in the South yesterday reduced local teachers and students to tears.

"Our morale is almost gone. All teachers who arrived at the scene wept," said Chuenjit Chokedee, Muang Narathiwat School's assistant director.

She described the fire as the worst thing that ever happened to the school.

The school has 651 students from kindergarten to Grade 6. All are Muslim except for 36 Buddhists.

"The culprits [behind the arson attacks] have destroyed the future of their own children," Chuenjit said.

The school's kindergarten to Grade 4 classrooms were destroyed in the fire.

School director Suthin Iadnusorn, his eyes brimming with tears, admitted that the attackshad shaken both students and teachers.

"Such attacks are inhumane. Those who did it have left local people, their [the attackers'] relatives, to suffer," he said.

However, Suthin said he had instructed all teachers to be strong and prove to the public that they were not intimidated.

"We are the moral solace for students and their parents around here. We must not appear weak," he said.

Suthin announced that the classes would be held as usual today because exams were coming up soon.

At Khao Phra School, maths teacher Sopana Chosakul-chart said she rushed to theschool as soon as she heard itwas ablaze. She was amongthose who tried to put out the raging fire.

"Some of my colleagues broke down in tears," Sopana said. "We don't know when the attackers will strike again."

Sopana is one of the seven teachers at the school, which has 125 pupils.

Thanida sae Heng, the head student at Sungai Kolok School, said she did not feel any relief that her school was not a target in the simultaneous arson attacks.

"I am so sad and sorry for children at schools that were burned down," she said.

She said she would be happy to share her classrooms with students from other schools and would also be willing to donate any items that were needed.

"I must admit I am scared. I've never thought such attacks would happen," Thanida said.

Education Minister Adisai Bodharamik said, "We will do our best to ensure that all schools are able to open on Monday [today]."

Deputy Minister Sirikorn Maneerin said vocational colleges and military agencies were trying to find spare equipment as well as sites to serve as substitute classrooms.

"We are finding tents, tables and chairs," Sirikorn said. About Bt10 million in emergency funds will be spent to keep the schools running, and more assistance would follow, she added.

--The Nation 2004-01-05

[george]

Update:

Thailand Tightens Security After Attacks in South

BANGKOK - Thailand has declared martial law in three predominantly Muslim southern provinces after deadly weekend attacks by suspected gunrunners facing a government crackdown on illegal arms, officials said Monday

Gunmen killed four soldiers during a raid on an army weapons depot Sunday and 21 schools were burned down in Narathiwat province, about 720 miles south of Bangkok.

Officials blamed the attacks on Thai and Malaysian arms dealers, helped by "insiders," seeking to replenish stocks lost to the government's war on illegal arms. The attackers got away with hundreds of weapons.

"We were reluctant to enforce it for fear of affecting peoples' freedom," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters Monday, referring to martial law.

The government declared martial law, which allows the military to search homes and detain suspects without charge, in Narathiwat and the neighboring provinces of Yala and Pattani.

Thaksin said the government would explain the need for martial law in the area and enforce it as gently as possible. Thaksin launched a war on the illegal arms trade in December after declaring victory in a year-long campaign against drugs in which more the 2,000 suspected dealers were killed.

After decades of war and insurgencies in neighboring countries, Thailand became the center of a covert arms trade that still supplies rebels as far away as Indonesia and Sri Lanka, security analysts say.

Much of the trade has occurred in southern Thailand, where a low-level Muslim separatist war rumbled in the 1970s and 1980s but petered out a decade ago.

Police say the former guerrillas are now more interested in crime and extortion rackets.

Six million of predominantly Buddhist Thailand's 63 million people are Muslims, most of whom live in the country's five southern provinces.

Officials denied the weekend attacks were linked to regional Muslim extremists.

The August capture in Thailand of suspected Jemaah Islamiah operations chief Hambali, accused of planning the Bali bombing in 2002, heightened fears that the country was being used as a haven to plan attacks.

TIGHT SECURITY

Thaksin said the school burnings were coordinated to keep authorities busy while the gunmen raided the army depot and stole hundreds of guns with the help of "insiders."

"These guys are capable and experienced. They are capable because our people are weak. They (soldiers) have an arsenal to defend, but they were negligent," Thaksin said.

During their insurgency, Muslim rebels used to set fire to schools because they were seen as symbols of government authority.

Thaksin said some of the attackers were believed to have fled across the border into Malaysia.

Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh told reporters on a special task force had been set up to search for the suspects along the Thai-Malaysian border.

"Troops are securing sea, jungles and searching villages for suspects," Chavalit said.

--Reuters 2004-01-05

[george]

This thread continues here with more updates:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4959

[Butterfly]

I think this has all the signs of AQ, no shit !!! this is the type of techniques they use.

[george]

Wave of violence shakes Thailand

By Richard S Ehrlich

BANGKOK - Violent attacks in the Muslim-majority south of Thailand have some observers worried - not for the first time - that the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is in denial about the scope of the terrorist threat in the area.

Just one day after attackers killed four Thai soldiers, set fire to schools and police checkposts and stole weapons near the Malaysian border, explosions killed at least three police in the south on Monday. The violence occurred despite massive security in the troublesome region, and martial law has been declared in three provinces. Yet some authorities continued to insist that the attacks were the work of "robbers", and not Islamist insurgents.

"It is too early to tell" who the culprits were, the government's spokesman, Jakrapob Penkair, said in an interview on Monday. "These people should be called robbers" who had "no ideological" motivation, Jakrapob insisted, in reference to Sunday's daring assault on a Thai army camp at Narathiwat Ratchanakarin that killed four soldiers.

Whoever staged the Narathiwat assaults displayed synchronized guerrilla techniques enabling them to seize more than 100 US-supplied M-16 assault rifles, burn down about 20 schools and also destroy several police posts, according to reports from Narathiwat.

The assailants drove a pickup truck into army camp and opened fire, killing four warrant officers guarding a weapons stockpile. The attackers fled, scattering spikes on the road to deflate pursuers' tires, and blocked the route with felled trees containing booby traps amid the branches, according to Thai news reports.

Assailants also splashed gasoline onto about 20 schools and ignited the buildings - a tactic favored by Muslim separatists during the past decade amid complaints that minority ethnic and Islamic subjects were not given priority by Buddhist-majority Thailand's education system.

While Thai troops scoured the region in search of the Narathiwat raiders, on Monday in Pattani city, about 160 kilometers to the north, "a fresh round of bombings" killed at least three policemen and injured several others, Jakrapob said. Pattani is about 870 kilometers south of Bangkok.

"A bomb exploded in a guard booth" killing one police officer and injuring three other policemen, Jakrapob said. About an hour later, another bomb exploded in a police station in the city's park, severely injuring another policeman. "Police found more bombs planted near a department store" but while trying to defuse it, "we lost two more policemen", he said.

Thai officials appeared flabbergasted by the bloodiness and success of the attacks, and said corrupt officials may have played a role. "It is inconceivable that a civilian could have sneaked inside the camp and sent information to the bandits," said Deputy Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh. "The attack was well planned," Chavalit told reporters.

"We never thought it [the attacks] would be so fast, so intense," 4th Army commander Lieutenant General Pongsak Ekbannasingh was quoted as saying.

In May, the illegal Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO) boasted that Thai security forces were "falling like leaves" because Muslims were fighting to free southern Thailand from Bangkok's rule.

In an editorial on Monday, the English-language Bangkok-based Nation newspaper predicted: "In the coming months, there will be growing violence against army positions as well as civilians in the predominately Muslim south. Our leaders must stop describing the perpetrators as amateur bandits who just want to steal weapons and then sell them illegally," it warned. "Following the recent truck-bomb attack on Lima Camp in Karbala, Iraq, in which two Thai soldiers were among the 19 coalition members killed, our government must be more vigilant about possible terrorist attacks inside the kingdom," The Nation said.

More than 420 Thai troops are currently in Iraq, and US President George W Bush recently upgraded Thailand to "major non-NATO ally" status. Thailand also sent forces to Afghanistan to support the US-led occupation there. Some observers view Bangkok's support of the US-led occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq as reigniting long-simmering Muslim grievances in southern Thailand.

"On the one hand, Thaksin admitted ... there are still a handful of uprisings in the form of liberation movements [in southern Thailand], but said that they are not powerful enough to be considered as a threat to his territorial ambitions," wrote PULO deputy president Lukman B Lima in a rare dispatch from exile in Sweden. "If his conglomerates and himself are so powerful in practicing 'might is right' - which is the law of the jungle - then why are his serving security men falling like leaves?" Lukman said in remarks published in The Nation in May.

Bangkok "illegally incorporated" the far south into Thailand 100 years ago and now rules it with "colonial" repression while "committing crimes against humanity in the area", Lukman said.

Bangkok denies all allegations of intentional mistreatment of Thailand's Muslims and insists that separatist guerrillas are "bandits" enriching themselves while spewing religious and political rhetoric.

About 90 percent of Thailand's 63 million citizens are Buddhist. Most of Thailand's 4 percent Muslim population live in the south, in and around Pattani province. About 80 percent of these Muslims are of ethnic Malay descent, inspiring PULO to demand a so-called Malay Kingdom of Pattani, or Greater Pattani. It would include the southern Thai provinces of Narathiwat, Yala, Pattani, Satun and part of Songkhla - a region Thailand annexed in 1902.

For more than 500 years, Muslim ethnic Malays have battled Thai security forces in hit-and-run skirmishes to end what they perceive as Thailand's "racist" Buddhist domination. Thai Buddhists crushed southern Muslim uprisings in 1564 and 1776, but the area remains relatively poor, alienated and misunderstood by Bangkok's government and military officials.

Today, PULO is believed to possess a couple of hundred fighters scattered on both sides of the Thai-Malaysian border.

In June, the US hailed the arrest in Thailand of three suspected Muslim terrorists who allegedly conspired to explode car bombs at embassies and tourist sites in Bangkok. The trio were suspected of belonging to Southeast Asia's Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for the October 2002 bombing in Bali that killed 202 people. After they were arrested in June in Narathiwat city, the three men pleaded innocent and their trial is under way.

"I was informed that about 30 trained terrorists had crossed the border" from Malaysia into southern Thailand, Thaksin told journalists in April. "The [Thai] military units, they did not seem to take proper precautions," the prime minister said at the time.

--Asia Times 2004-01-06

[george]

Emergency meetings held in Pattani in wake of attacks

PATTANI, Thailand, Jan 6 (AFP) - Three senior Thai ministers held emergency meetings with military and civilian leaders in Pattani in the country's restive south on Tuesday in a bid to quell a spate of violence that has left six people dead.

Four soldiers were killed on Sunday during a brazen arms heist by dozens of assailants as 18 schools were set ablaze in Narathiwat and Yala provinces. On Monday, martial law was declared in some districts after two bomb blasts killed two policemen.

On Tuesday, military bomb disposal experts were called to a shop in downtown Pattani near a large mosque after it received a telephone threat but were yet to arrive from neighbouring Yala.

"Someone telephoned in a bomb threat about an hour ago," Police Sergeant Nisoh Sahdee told AFP as several soldiers wielding M-16s milled around the shop awaiting experts and police.

"It's a similar situation (to Monday) that we have here," he said, in another indication of the growing climate of nervousness in the region.

Local reports said eight schools in Pattani had cancelled classes due to bomb threats but local authorities had found nothing irregular.

"As of now we still don't know who the culprits were, but based on evidence we obtained and (which was) examined by forensics, the bombs were new models and I think that the culprits will create more unrest," deputy prime minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh told reporters before leaving Bangkok.

He rushed to Pattani with Interior Minister Wan Muhamad Nor Matha, the only Muslim minister in government, Defence Minister Thammarak Issarangkul Na Ayutthaya and army commander General Chaisit Shinawatra early on Tuesday.

"The three ministers and the army commander have received a briefing from the military, police and top civil officials in Pattani," Major General Jiarapan Kasemsansuk told AFP.

Pattani is one of five majority-Muslim provinces in southern Thailand, which has seen a spate of violent attacks against police and the military, including the killings of 20 people since April 2003.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters that he was worried about the violence, blaming a weak bureaucracy for failing to anticipate and quash the attacks.

"Absolutely, I am so worried over what has happened. We have to tackle it and we have to achieve this goal. Nothing is easy," he said.

Interior minister Wan Nor said he had instructed officials in the south to boost security at government offices, schools, community gathering places and entertainment spots.

"They should provide 24-hour security protection to all these places," he said, adding that the assailants included drug addicts and the unemployed.

Thaksin on Monday dismissed suggestions that separatists were behind the two days of violence but conceded that Islamic militants had been at work in the area. A separatist rebellion has simmered for years in Thailand's deep south.

A district civil officer, Niporn Narapitakul, said the city was unperturbed by the ongoing threats, as security did not appear to be overly tight.

"It's normal. There's a little bit of fear but not too much -- this happens every year," he said.

Defence ministry spokesman major-general Palangoon Klaharn said the Fourth Army, which is responsible for security along Thailand's border with Malaysia, would use troops in the region if required.

"The local army will mobilise troops from the regional Fourth Army rather than sending them from here (Bangkok)," he told AFP.

Martial law has been declared in several districts in Pattani, Yala and

Narathiwat provinces, giving soldiers the power to detain suspects without warrants and seize property.

Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, meanwhile, was travelling to Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday. Thaksin said his trip was not directly related to addressing the flare-up in violence but that the topic could come up in the talks.

"We have enjoyed a good and close relationship with Malaysia, so we can talk on any subject," he said.

--AFP 2004-01-06

[george]

Violence in Thailand a wake-up call: PM

BANGKOK: Thailand's prime minister said Wednesday an eruption of violence in the Muslim-majority south should come as a "wake-up call" for the security forces, as police were targeted in a new attack.

Thaksin Shinawatra said a spate of attacks against soldiers, police and schools was "regrettable" and that the government "must accept that we underestimated some things".

"This incident shows our prolonged weakness in working together and in relations between officials and residents," he said in a speech to a political science institute in Bangkok.

"It will be a big wake up call for the Thai security system and we must solve the problem systematically. It is a lesson for us."

An audacious attack on a military camp in Narathiwat Sunday left four soldiers dead while 18 schools and two police checkpoints were torched. A day later two policemen were killed in Pattani as they tried to defuse a bomb.

In the latest violence Wednesday, two policemen were slightly injured when gunmen opened fire on their station in Yala province.

Army chief General Chaisit Shinawatra blamed the attack on the same assailants, who have been linked by Thai officials to interests as varied as Muslim militants, organized crime, bandits and business disputes.

"It's the same old group of attackers. They were very brazen to carry out the attack. We want them to go on so that we can retaliate against them," he told reporters.

No arrests have yet been made in connection with the case and the government has fumbled in its attempts to name those responsible.

Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar was quoted as saying by the official Malaysian Bernama news agency Wednesday that Thailand had told Malaysia it suspected terrorists were involved.

Bernama said Syed Hamid told reporters Thailand "considered the attacks as those of terrorists and not bandits".

Syed Hamid held talks with his Thai counterpart Surakiart Sathirathai in Malaysia on Tuesday, when he flew in to brief Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on the violence.

Thaksin however insisted Wednesday that the attackers were not terrorists and said instead that they were Islamic teachers holding dual citizenship in Thailand and Malaysia who had slipped into Malaysia.

"No, they were not international terrorists and this had nothing to do with the capture of Hambali," he said, referring to last August's arrest in Thailand of the Indonesian believed to be al-Qaida's point man in Southeast Asia.

Thai officials have repeatedly blamed "bandits" for the violence, but Thaksin on Monday implicated Islamic militants "tied to mujahedin." He later said, however, that business conflicts were probably the root of the trouble.

A separatist movement has rumbled on for decades in the five Muslim majority provinces bordering Malaysia but most analysts believe the groups would be unable to launch such well-coordinated attacks independently.

They have said this week's attacks were a marked departure from previous violence in the region and could have been organized crime gangs and Islamic militant groups working together.

Top Thai ministers meanwhile met here for a second day to plan a response to the attacks and said they would set up a task force of military, police and civil servants to provide security in the restive area.

--Agencies