Bombs, shootings kill six in Thai Muslim south

THAILAND: At least six people were killed in a series of bomb and gun attacks in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south, despite a post-coup government promising a peaceful solution to the insurgency, police said on Friday.

In a dawn attack, militants used a mobile phone to detonate a 10-kg (22-lb) bomb at a village teashop in Songkhla province's Taepa district aimed at police and soldiers who often drank morning coffee there, police said.

Instead, they killed three civilians, two Muslims and a Buddhist, and wounded 13, police said. The bomb was hidden under a stone table where police and soldiers usually gathered for morning coffee, but the bomb exploded before they got there, police said.

"Usually I would sit there for coffee, but luckily I wasn't there today because of another shooting incident," a detective sergeant said.

Taepa is one of several Songkhla districts into which violence has spilled from the core Malay-speaking area of overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand where more than 1,700 people have been killed since the violence began in January 2004.

The insurgency in the three largely Muslim southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat - an Islamic sultanate until annexed by Bangkok a century ago - has shown no signs of abating since a Sept. 19 coup led by a Muslim general.

Nevertheless, Surayud Chulanont, a former army chief appointed prime minister by the military, has said he wants a peaceful solution to the violence and offered talks with militant leaders, a policy u-turn from the ousted Thaksin Shinawatra.

Surayud went to Kuala Lumpur this week for talks with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who promised full cooperation, another sharp contrast to the Thaksin era when sharp words were exchanged as Bangkok accused Malaysia of sheltering militants.

"When justice is in place, there won't be divisions between Buddhists, Muslims and Christians," Surayud said in a lecture to the National Defence College on his return from Kuala Lumpur.

Also on Friday, a 35-year-old Muslim rubber tapper was killed in a drive-by shooting by militants in Narathiwat while heading to a rubber plantation on a motorcycle with his wife, who escaped unhurt, police said.

Militants also raided a house of a 37-year-old Muslim village leader and killed him with an M-16 rifle and shot dead a 29-year-old Muslim woman roadside vendor with a pistol in separate attacks in Narathiwat on Thursday night, police said.

Militants then hid a 5-kg (11 lb) bomb in her stall and detonated it when soldiers arrived to investigate, wounding two, police said.

Taepa, Friday, Reuters