BANGKOK, 25 December 2004 — Three senior Thai army officers will face an investigation panel to determine if they might be punished for the deaths of 78 Muslim protesters in army custody in October, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday.

If they were found responsible, they could face criminal charges, Thaksin told reporters.

The panel would want to know why former southern region commander General Pisarn Wattanawongkhiri, his deputy, and another senior officer did not personally supervise the transport of the detainees, he said.

The 78 were among hundreds “stacked like bricks” in army trucks for a long journey to a military base after security forces broke up an Oct. 25 demonstration at Tak Bai, where seven protesters were killed.

They died of suffocation or were crushed to death following the demonstration in Thailand’s mainly Muslim Deep South where more than 500 people have been killed since violence erupted in January.

“It needs to find out why the officers were not present during the whole operation,” Thasksin said.

On Wednesday, Thaksin said a report by a government-appointed panel blamed senior officials for mishandling efforts to control the protest.

Bomb Kills Two, Wounds

Five in South

In Sungai Kolok, a bomb hidden in a parked motorcycle killed two people and wounded five yesterday, outside a bank in Thailand’s largely Muslim south, where authorities fear militants will step up attacks in the New Year.

The bomb shattered windows up to the third floor of the Siam Commercial Bank branch in Sungai Kolok, a tourist town.

“It was the work of people bent on creating unrest. They stashed the bomb in a motorcycle and triggered it,” Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters in Bangkok as officials said 2,000 police would be sent south after Jan. 1.

Police said they believed the bomber was killed by the blast around 9 a.m. near the bank’s automated teller machine, although there was speculation it was triggered by mobile phone.

“We suspect the dead man may have some connection with members of these militant groups,” southern police commander Lieutenant-General Manoj Kraiwong, told a Bangkok radio station.

Three soldiers were wounded and one later died in hospital. They were the main target, Manoj said, but three civilians, one man and two women, were also wounded.

It was the third serious bombing in the town since violence erupted in the south in January, fuelling fears of a revived separatist insurgency and increasing pressure on Thaksin as he heads into a general election in February.

In October, two people, one a Malaysian tourist, were killed and 20 wounded by bombs that exploded at two tourist clubs in Sungai Kolok. In March, a bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded at a karaoke bar on the same tourist strip, wounding 28.

Altogether, about 500 people have been killed this year in the three provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, which once were part of a sultanate annexed by Thailand a century ago. Security forces are on high alert, with an extra 2,000 police to be deployed from late next week to help guard against attacks ahead of the Jan. 4 anniversary of an armed raid on an army base in Narathiwat which started the violence.