Fresh attacks hit southern Thailand

PATTANI, Thailand: Attackers fatally shot a government official to death, wounded a security guard and burned a Buddhist monastery in separate incidents yesterday in southern Thailand’s Muslim-dominated provinces, police said.

Sakol Chuaysakul, a 55-year-old revenue department official, was shot three times in the back by two unidentified gunmen in the Su-ngai Kolok district of Narathiwat province, said police Captain Chalerm Yingkong. He died while being taken to a hospital.

In the province’s Ruesoh district, masked men riding a motorcycle shot 33-year-old Suchart Saeju, a hospital security guard and wounded his left hand, said police Captain Sophon Yonglan.

Earlier, assailants set fire to a monastery in nearby Yala province and damaged it.

The attacks are the latest in a series that have left about 50 people –– most of them police and government officials –– dead in Thailand’s southernmost provinces in recent months. Among them were several Buddhist monks who were slashed to death.

–– AP 2004-03-16

SYDNEY, Australia - Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terror network claims to have bought ready-made nuclear weapons on the black market in central Asia, the biographer of al-Qaida's No. 2 leader was quoted as telling an Australian television station.

In an interview scheduled to be televised on Monday, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir said Ayman al-Zawahri claimed that "smart briefcase bombs" were available on the black market.

It was not clear when the interview between Mir and al-Zawahri took place.

U.S. intelligence agencies have long believed that al-Qaida attempted to acquire a nuclear device on the black market, but say there is no evidence it was successful.

In the interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. television, parts of which were released Sunday, Mir recalled telling al-Zawahri it was difficult to believe that al-Qaida had nuclear weapons when the terror network didn't have the equipment to maintain or use them.

"Dr Ayman al-Zawahri laughed and he said `Mr. Mir, if you have $30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available,'" Mir said in the interview.

"They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs," Mir quoted al-Zawahri as saying.

Al-Qaida has never hidden its interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

The U.S. federal indictment of bin Laden charges that as far back as 1992 he "and others known and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of nuclear weapons."