Violence flares in southern Thailand

PATTANI, Thailand -- A heap of bodies in a bullet-scarred mosque attested to a sharp and sudden upsurge of separatist violence Wednesday in Thailand's Muslim south. While the prime minister said the issues were strictly local, some tied the clashes to the country's support for the war in Iraq.\nPolice said they shot and killed 107 Islamic fighters -- including 32 inside the mosque -- after repelling near simultaneous attacks by hundreds of militants.\nThe violence began when the militants, mostly teenagers, stormed about 15 police stations and government buildings in three provinces.\nMost of the attackers were armed only with machetes, but at least some of those killed in the mosque had guns and knew how to use them, said army chief Gen. Chaiyasit Shinawatra.\nThree policemen and two soldiers were killed and 17 militants arrested during the pre-dawn attacks in Yala, Pattani and Songkhla provinces, officials said.\nPrime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said authorities had been tipped off and were ready for the attacks. He said the outcome would help end an Islamic insurgency that has simmered for decades in this Buddhist nation's impoverished south.\n"It will be hard for them to do these kind of bad things again," Thaksin told reporters in Bangkok, the capital.\nMuslims, 5 percent of Thailand's 64 million people, are a majority in the country's thin southern peninsula. They have long complained of cultural, religious and economic repression by the central government, some 600 miles away in Bangkok.\nThaksin blamed a surge in violence this year on money flowing into the south from drug traffickers and corrupt politicians. Other officials say the trouble stems from rival criminal factions or conflicts between corrupt army and police forces over the spoils of smuggling.\nThaksin insisted no foreign terrorists were involved, though the area is believed to have been used as a hiding place for militants linked to al Qaeda through Jamaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group.\nMansalan Mohamad, a lecturer at the Yala Islamic College in the south, acknowledged the motives cited by the prime minister but said they weren't the whole story. "The trend of growing Muslim anger and the war in Iraq, the situation in the Middle East, also are part of the factors," he said.\nThailand has about 450 troops in Iraq and has cooperated closely in efforts to catch terrorists in Southeast Asia.\nAnalysts said Wednesday's attacks may indicate rising stakes in a hitherto small-scale battle of bombings and drive-by shootings.\nSunai Phasuk, a Bangkok political analyst, said the attackers showed readiness to fight and die. "They fought with knives and swords, fully understanding that the police will be ready and waiting for them with M-16 rifles ... they refused to back off.\n"This is very dangerous," he said.\nThaksin said the attackers arrived at their targets on brand new motorcycles. "This proves they got financial support from influential figures, including politicians and drug gangsters," he said, without elaborating.\nThe prime minister said the assailants' apparent goal was to steal guns, as they did in a Jan. 4 attack on a military base that netted hundreds of weapons.\nBut security forces lying in wait responded with a hail of bullets Wednesday. TV footage showed attackers' bodies sprawled in pools of blood, some of them still clasping machetes.\nChaiyasit, the army chief, said one group of 32 attackers fled the initial skirmishes to the 16th-century Kreu-Se mosque in Pattani, a town of a few thousand people.\n"They were well trained," he said. "Those who were holed up in the mosque for hours had M-16 and AK-47 rifles and were skilled in using such war weapons."\nSecurity forces lobbed tear gas canisters into the flat-roofed single-story shrine before peppering it with grenade and automatic fire.\nBy the time journalists were allowed in, no guns were in evidence. Police said they had collected them.\nWaedaloh Hayeesohoh, a Muslim elder from a nearby village, said he heard gunfire and went to investigate. "I saw some men and knew they weren't from around here. They were armed with guns and knives," he said.