PATTANI, Thailand, 27 October 2004 — At least 78 Muslims were suffocated or crushed to death after being arrested and packed into trucks by security forces following a riot in Muslim-dominated southern Thailand, officials said yesterday.

The announcement dramatically increased the death toll from the latest eruption of violence in Thailand’s south to 84. Officials earlier said six people were shot to death during the riot Monday at a police station in Narathiwat province.

Also yesterday, suspected militants riding on the back of motorcycles shot and wounded six people in separate drive-by attacks in other parts of Narathiwat. The attacks were seen as a signal that the militants are not afraid of Thai authorities, police said.

Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunan, a forensics expert who works for the Justice Ministry, told a news conference that she and a team of doctors conducted autopsies on 78 bodies at an army camp in Pattani province and found that most had perished from suffocation. The dead were among some 1,300 people who military officials said had been arrested Monday following the police station riot.

Maj. Gen. Sinchai Nujsathit, deputy commander of the fourth army, said the victims may have died from suffocation “because we had more than 1,300 people packed into the six-wheel trucks.”

He did not say how many trucks were used, but a witness who saw part of the incident said the detainees were loaded onto at least two 10-wheel and four six-wheel trucks, all bearing army insignias. Their hands were bound with rope, the witness said on condition of anonymity.

Manit Suthaporn, deputy permanent secretary of the Justice Ministry, said the victims probably suffocated because they were piled on top of each other in the vehicles.

The violence erupted Monday when about 2,000 Muslim youths demonstrated outside the police station in Takbai district, demanding the release of six detained men.

Police and military forces tried to disperse the crowd with gunshots, water cannons and tear gas. Six people were killed and several injured in the melee, army commander Gen. Pisarn Wattanawongkhiri said yesterday.

Violence has troubled overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand’s three Muslim-majority provinces for decades, but has worsened this year. Residents claim they are discriminated against by the central government.

The toll from Monday’s violence was the largest from a single incident since April, when police and soldiers responded with overwhelming force to attacks by alleged militants armed mostly with machetes, killing 107.

Islamic leaders accused Thai troops of overreacting to the police station protest and warned it could trigger an upswing in violence. “I am in shock,” Abdulraman Abdulsamad, the chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, told The Associated Press on learning of the suffocation deaths. “I cannot say what going to happen, but I believe that hell will break out.”

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited the region briefly late Monday, where he praised the security forces and vowed tough action against suspected Islamic separatists.

“The protesters had several motives, but the main reason was separatism,” Thaksin said, speaking before the announcement of the 78 suffocation deaths.