Patani Conflict

Three killed, five wounded in restive southern Thailand

August 30, 2010

A soldier stands guard on his vehicle after a bomb attack in Yala province, August 22, 2009. — Reuters pic

YALA, Aug 30 — Drive-by shootings and suspected Muslim insurgent violence in southern Thailand killed three people and wounded five in the past 24 hours, police said today, the latest unrest in the region bordering Malaysia.

A bomb hidden under a pick-up truck of a security volunteer exploded in Narathiwat province today, wounding three people.

That came a day after a two-year-old Muslim boy was killed in a drive-by shooting while on a motorbike with his father, who was wounded. A Buddhist couple was also shot dead as they drove to a market in Pattani province. And a bomb in southernmost Yala province wounded a pregnant fruit seller.

More than 4,100 people, both Buddhists and Muslims, have been killed in six years of unrest in Thailand’s southernmost provinces as ethnic Malay Muslims fight for autonomy from the country’s Buddhist majority.

Local Muslims largely oppose the presence of tens of thousands of police, soldiers and state-armed Buddhist guards in the rubber-rich region, which was part of a Malay Muslim sultanate until annexed by Thailand a century ago.

About 80 per cent of the three southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are Muslim. — Reuters