Three Muslims killed at prayer in Thailand's south
Tue 21 Jun 2005
BANGKOK, June 21 (Reuters) - Suspected Islamic militants burst into a house in southern Thailand, where more than 700 people have been killed in 18 months of violence, and shot dead three young Muslim men as they prayed, police said on Tuesday.
"Anyone who betrays us or cooperates with our enemy -- the government -- will face a severe penalty," said a note left behind by the militants.
"We are fighting for Allah and a liberated Pattani," police quoted it as saying in reference to the old sultanate of Pattani that was annexed by Buddhist majority Thailand a century ago and has been torn periodically by separatist upheavals since.
About five militants drove to the house in Pattani, now one of five Muslim-majority southern Thai provinces covering the old sultanate, late on Monday, opened fire with handguns and fled, police captain Thaweesak Thengwarawit told Reuters.
"All three victims died at the scene, with one of them still holding the sacred Koran in his arms," he said.
"We found propaganda leaflets in the house, but we don't know whether they belonged to the dead men or the killers," another police officer said of flyers calling for support for a struggle for an independent Pattani.
Most of the violence of the past 18 months has been confined largely to the three southernmost Thai provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala near the Malaysian border, where most people speak a Malay dialect.
On Tuesday morning, a bomb planted under a car exploded outside a bank in Narathiwat shortly after it opened but did not cause any casualties, police said.
Bombings, shootings and arson attacks directed at state buildings or workers -- Buddhist and Muslim -- have become daily occurrences despite more than 30,000 troops and police patrolling the region of fewer than 2 million people,.
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