Bangkok - Suspected Muslim separatists in Thailand's deep South taunted the authorities by ambushing an army patrol Monday as Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont visited the troubled region. In what may have been an attempt to replicate the wiping out of an entire Thai army unit a week ago, insurgents detonated a bomb near the foot patrol, then followed up with heavy gunfire.
The soldiers, guarding railway passengers in Narathiwat's Rue So district, 770 kilometres south of Bangkok, were able to return fire, although eight soldiers suffered injuries, according to the Thai News Agency.
A week ago an eight-man patrol tasked with guarding teachers in the same province was blown up in a humvee vehicle and then all finished off by gunfire. The insurgents beheaded the patrol leader before they withdrew.
Earlier Monday police said that a drive-by assassin on a motorbike killed one of their informants, Abdulloh Toh-adam, 40, riding his motorbike on the Yala-Pattani highway.
Surayud admitted to local reporters that the insurgency could not be ended quickly despite a lot of success in rounding up suspects, better coordination between government agencies and greater help from the local population.
Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas and the national police chief General Seripisuth Temiyavej accompanied the prime minister.
The director of a key coordinating agency, the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center, said Saturday that every major village in the region will get more defence volunteers following the recent upsurge in violence.
Pranai Suwannarat said a local militia can recognize and monitor the movements of other villagers quite successfully.
Pranai said the authorities would also have to speed up their investigations of suspect informers and sympathizers who might be passing information on to the separatists.
Ten Muslim policemen and soldiers were arrested 10 days ago for allegedly supplying intelligence to the shadowy underground fighting groups.
Another party of captured guerillas also embarrassed the government recently when they escaped from a police lockup in the province and disappeared with alarming ease.
Thailand's so-called deep South, comprising the three border provinces Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, has been in turmoil since January 2004 when Muslim militants raided an army arms depot in Narathiwat and stole more than 300 war weapons, unleashing a military crackdown on the long-simmering separatist movement.
