Policeman beheaded in Thailand's Muslim south
Tue 5 Jul 2005
BANGKOK, July 6 (Reuters) - Suspected Islamic militants beheaded a policeman in Thailand's restive Muslim south, officials said on Wednesday, the tenth decapitation in more than 18 months of unrest but the first such attack on police. At least two militants shot senior police sergeant Sampan Onyala, a 43-year-old Buddhist, with a pistol and an AK-47 rifle late on Tuesday in a Muslim village in Pattani, one of the three southernmost provinces plagued by the violence, police said.
"The bandits beheaded him and took his head with them. We had to give up our search last night because it was too dark," a police officer in Pattani told Reuters by telephone. "We resumed our search this morning, but we still haven't found it."
About 800 people have been killed in the unrest in the Muslim-majority southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, home to a low-key separatist insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s.
The government in the Buddhist majority kingdom has imposed martial law on parts of the south since violence flared anew in January 2004, at the same time as offering an olive branch of lavish development aid. Neither approach seems to have made any difference.
Although most of the violence takes the form of daily shootings or small bomb or arson attacks, in the last month militants have stepped up a beheading campaign against Buddhists.
So far, most of the victims have been migrant labourers such as rubber plantation workers. In some cases, notes left beside the bodies said the beheadings were in revenge for the wrongful arrest of Muslims by Thai security forces.
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