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Thai soldiers hold a Muslim woman as she and others block a road to demand the release of a suspected bomber in Yala province in southern Thailand. (AFP) Eight Thai rebels killed in shoot-out RA NGAE, Thailand At least eight separatist were killed yesterday in a 30-minute gun battle with security forces in Thailand's Muslim-majority south, officials said. About 60 army rangers and soldiers raided an insurgent training camp near the border with Malaysia, a region where some 2,000 people have been killed in three years of unrest, security officials said. Security forces blocked off the area and dispatched 100 reinforcements to search for fleeing militants, said police Major General Yongyuth Chareonvanich. "Our forces did not suffer any casualties," he said. The shoot-out was the biggest clash between security forces and separatists since the insugents staged a daring series of coordinated attacks across the region on February 18 as many Thais were celebrating the Lunar New Year. Those attacks left nine dead and 44 injured. Meanwhile, some 100 veiled women and children blocked a main bridge near Yala town for more than three hours to demand the release of a suspected bomber. Authorities called out 50 female army rangers to break up the protest. The all-female ranger units are part of the government's effort to put a softer face on security forces in the region. Violence has recently escalated in the three Muslim-majority southern provinces along the Malaysian border, despite a raft of peace-building measures proposed by the government -------------------------------------------------- Thai Troops Kill 5 Suspected Separatists Thailand: In a rare victory for government security forces in Thailand's troubled deep South, a patrol of para-military troops on Friday killed five suspected insurgents after a 30-minute clash. The Thai patrol ran into an ambush near Kutong village, in Rangae district of Narathiwat province, 790 kilometres south of Bangkok, at about 10 a.m. Friday. A 30-minute gun battle ensued before the suspected separatists withdrew, leaving behind five dead, two M-16 assault rifles and one rifle. There were no casualties reported on the government side. It was a rare victory for the 20,000 Thai troops based in the deep South, a region that includes Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces. Clashes and revenge killings have claimed more than 2,000 lives in the area over the past three years but perpetrators, with the support of the local population, are rarely caught. Meanwhile, Thai National Police Chief Seriphisuth Temiyawes, who was visiting Pattani on Friday, warned the insurgents that the government's recent policy of reconciliation did not mean security personnel would sit back. "Reconciliation does not mean we want to be attacked," Seriphisuth told the Thai Rath online news service. "We have to take the offensive at the same time." Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont has taken a soft-glove approach to the region's problems, stressing the need for economic development and cultural understanding, since he came to power in October last year following the coup of September 19. The strong-arm tactics of his predecessor, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, were blamed for uniting the region against Bangkok. More than 80 per cent of the 2 million people living in Thailand's deep South are Muslim of ethnic Malay decent who have closer cultural affinities with neighbouring Malaysia than with the predominantly Buddhist Thai kingdom. The region was an independent Islamic sultanate known as Pattani for hundreds of years, before it was conquered by Bangkok in 1786. The border provinces came under direct rule of the Thai bureaucracy in 1902. A separatist struggle has simmered in the region for the past five to six decades, fuelled by the local population's sense of religious and cultural alienation from Thailand. The movement took a more militant turn in January 2004 after Muslim militants attacked an army arms depot and stole 300 rifles. ------------------------------------------------------- Five suspected insurgents killed in Thai South Five suspected militants were killed in southern Thailand province of Narathiwat on Friday after half-an-hour gunfight with government soldiers. The fighting started at about 11 a.m. (0400 GMT) as soldiers were patrolling in Narathiwat's Rangae district when the suspected militants opened fires at them, local news group The Nation reported. After about 30-minute of gunfighting, soldiers found five bodies of the militants. Soldiers also confiscated two M-16 rifles, a handgun. Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala are the three Thai southern border provinces plagued by violence related to an ongoing insurgency which has claimed nearly 2,000 lives since it resumed in early 2004. Source: Xinhua ------------------------------------------------- Thai police hit wall of silence in Muslim south YALA, Thailand (Reuters) - When Lieutenant Colonel Jirasit Lormae arrived at the scene of the murder of a Muslim man in southern Thailand and asked what had happened, villagers told the policeman in faltering Thai they knew nothing. However, whispers in the crowd in the local Malay dialect suggested they had noted an unusual absence of military patrols on the day the man, who was on a government list of suspected Muslim separatist rebels, was gunned down. The case shows why authorities in the predominantly Buddhist country are struggling to contain a three-year rebellion in the provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, where 80 percent of people are ethnic Malay Muslims and have few ties to Bangkok. Fear of reprisals from either the police, the army or the mysterious militants behind an insurgency that has claimed 2,000 lives since 2004 prevents anybody from talking, leaving police with little to go on. "We can't rely on witnesses because they don't know what will happen to them after they talk to police," said Jirasit, who is a rarity in the force -- an ethnic Malay Muslim who speaks the dialect. "They just lie to you." The lack of cooperation from the public goes further. Increasingly, whenever police take people into a station for questioning, crowds of veiled Muslim women and children lay siege to the building, demanding their release. Invariably, police let the suspects or witnesses go to avoid violence. Jirasit, the senior officer in Yala town, said it was also common for officers to arrive at the scene of a crime to find evidence has already been tampered with or removed. "We didn't find any bullet cartridges as villagers were spraying the road with water," Jirasit said, recalling the shooting of the Muslim man. ARMY, POLICE GULF Militants are also becoming more sophisticated, luring bomb squad officers with a small explosion, then hitting them with a follow-up blast, detonating it with a mobile phone, or a remote-control if the police and army are jamming phone signals. Jirasit also complains about a lack of cooperation between the police and soldiers in the region. Martial law means police have to seek permission from the army every time they want to raid a house. And unresolved cases are piling up on desk of Jirasit and his 15 colleagues -- most of them junior officers paid just 8,000 baht ($230) a month, who have to go out to buy their own cameras, firearms, flak jackets and even transport. "Our lives are hanging by a thread so we have to buy flak jackets for ourselves," said newly graduated Sub-Lieutenant Kittpong Pooduangchit, who sometimes has to ask his parents for money to get by. Jirasit says the contrast with Bangkok, which was hit by a series of small blasts that killed three people on New Year's Eve, could not be more telling. "There are 200 investigators with several police generals working on eight bombs in Bangkok, but down there are 15 of us handling dozens with me as the most senior officer," he said ---------------------------------- Panduan untuk bakal pengantin & sudah berkahwin.. cara utk mengawal kewangan, meningkatkan dana kewangan utk berkahwin & sesudah berkahwin, berbelanja secara berhemah.. insha ALlah layari laman web>> http://www.maskahwin.com/index.php?ref=delete untuk keterangan lanjut --------------------------------- Real people. Real questions. Real answers. Share what you know.
