THAILAND: Two separate attacks kill six in southern Thailand

Gunmen kill three Muslim schoolboys and three Buddhist villagers in separate attacks in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south, official said. Gunmen killed three Muslim schoolboys and three Buddhist villagers in separate attacks in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south, officials said on Sunday (March 18). The boys were shot dead late on Saturday at an Islamic boarding school in Saba Yoi in southern Songkhla province, near the Malaysian border, a police officer told Reuters. Police said separatist militants carried out the attack but angry villagers blamed it on Thai army rangers, saying they did not believe Muslims could have been responsible. Hundreds of protesters blockaded the school, closed roads and prevented officials from inspecting the scene. The officials said they were trying to negotiate access to the school, but villagers said they first wanted to bury the dead, two boys aged 17 and one 14. In a separate attack, a man and two women were shot dead, all Buddhists, in another part of Saba Yoi. The man, a rubber tapper, and a mother and daughter, taking a break from work at a charcoal furnace, were killed by gunmen on motorcycles, police said. Saba Yoi is one of several Songkhla districts into which violence has spilled from the three southernmost provinces hit by a three-year separatist insurgency. Rebels have targeted government offices, schools and businesses in attacks that have killed more than 2,000 people, many of them Muslims. The insurgency in the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat -- an Islamic sultanate until annexed by Bangkok a century ago -- has shown no signs of abating since a September 19 coup led by a Muslim general.

ITN Source | March 18, 2007

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