BANGKOK, 5 January 2004 — Four soldiers were shot dead and 18 schools torched by attackers in southern Thailand in what police believe could have been a revenge assault after an ally of a local troublemaker was arrested, officials said yesterday.
The pre-dawn killings occurred when several of a group of attackers raided a military base in Narathiwat province, which borders Malaysia, and stole a cache of about 100 weapons, officials said.
No one was injured in the burning of the schools, 16 of which are in Narathiwat and two in neighboring Yala province. Two police checkpoints were also torched in the raids, army spokesman Col. Somkuan Saengpattaranetr told AFP.
“A group of 30 armed men launched a series of three attacks in nine districts of two provinces in southern Thailand early Sunday morning,” Somkuan said.
Police chief Gen. Sant Sarutanond identified the prime suspect behind the assaults as a “local troublemaker” with dual Thai-Malaysian citizenship who had fled across the border. “He ordered his colleagues in Thailand to co-ordinate with a group, which I don’t want to name now, to burn down the schools in order to empty police posts, while another 50-or-so men then stole the guns,” Sant told reporters.
Motives for the attacks possibly included revenge against police, who recently arrested a key ally of the suspect, and against Thailand boosting the reward for information leading to his capture from 300,000 baht ($7,600) to 1.0 million baht, Sant said.
It remained unclear exactly how the soldiers were attacked and killed, but Lt. Gen. Pongsak Ekbanasing, commander of the Fourth Army Region which operates in the south, said on Thai radio that his troops had “fought bravely”.
The attacks were the worst incidents of violence in the Muslim-majority south since July, when five policemen and a civilian were killed and three police officers were wounded by masked gunmen.
Sant and other government officials held an emergency meeting to address the violence and quickly offered assurances that the brazen attacks were not acts of terrorism.
“They aimed to steal the weapons for their use, but they are not involved with any political or terrorist group,” Deputy Premier Chavalit Yongchaiyudh said after the meeting.
Thailand has been on the lookout for terrorist activity since authorities in June arrested four Muslims from the south who were suspected of being members of regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah.
Yesterday’s deaths bring to 22 the number of people killed in similar attacks in the restive region since last April — 20 military and policemen and two civilians, one of them a teacher.
Thailand’s five southern Muslim majority provinces have been plagued in recent years by small-scale separatist violence.
The movement has rumbled on for decades, but eased after relatively successful government policies aimed at integrating Thai Muslims into Thailand’s predominantly Buddhist society.
The latest attacks came four days after Interior Minister Wan Muhamad Nor Mata predicted, when authorities defused a powerful bomb in southern Pattani province, a trouble-free New Year holiday period.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra ordered tighter co-operation between army and police units that launched manhunts to find the killers, while authorities contacted counterparts in Malaysia to seek help on border hunts.
Southern Thailand was wracked by a spate of violence in 2001 and 2002 during which more than 20 policemen were killed, trains bombed, government offices attacked and weapons depots raided.
Thaksin has blamed recent attacks on criminal elements protecting lucrative arms smuggling operations.
Several areas of the five southernmost provinces deemed among the least stable have been under martial law for years, a situation that prompts regular criticism by religious leaders there.
