PATTANI, Thailand, 7 January 2004 — Heavily armed soldiers and police hunted for suspected militants in Thailand’s Muslim south yesterday as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra faced his most serious internal security crisis.
Special security teams, nicknamed “Hell Tour” units, fanned out across three southern provinces put under martial law after gunmen attacked an army depot, killed four soldiers and stole many weapons on Sunday. “We call them the ‘Hell Tour’ teams because they will send the bandits to hell,” one of their commanders told Reuters.
The violence, which included burning down state schools, has heightened fears of a revived separatist insurgency in southern Thailand where shadowy Muslim groups fought a low-level war in the 1970s and 1980s.
Thaksin, fearing damage to Thailand’s image as a safe place for tourists and investment, has vowed to hunt down the gunmen in the country’s toughest security clampdown in years. “It has shaken the prime minister,” one political analyst said. “He has done well on the economic side and placed his people into various army and security positions. He felt he was in control but this incident shows that the intelligence was not working.”
Some worry Bangkok’s demand for quick arrests, and the sight of police roadblocks and 24-hour army patrols, will anger Thai Muslims at a time of rising Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia.
“It’s scary. The situation has worsened,” Muhammad, an Islamic school teacher, told Reuters as he joined hundreds of people watching a bomb disposal squad investigating a bomb threat in central Pattani.
Four soldiers were killed Sunday during an 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.
“As of now we will be more offensive with our operations. No matter what the bandits come up with, we are ready,” chief of the Fourth Army Lt. Gen. Pongsak Eakbannasingh told reporters.
Pongsak spoke after talks with Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, Interior Minister Wan Muhammad Nor Matha — the only Muslim minister in government — and Defense Minister Thammarak Issarangkul Na Ayutthaya.
Police armed with M-16s sealed off the street, a few blocks from where two officers were killed on Monday when a bomb exploded as they tried to defuse it. Soh, a 50-year-old truck driver wearing a sarong, said people distrust the police.
