70 Said Killed in Thailand Gunbattles

[limbo]

In my POV 25% of the attacks didn't happen because the attackers where either too stoned or too drunk to show up at the right time and the right place.

[Khun_Kong]

BKK Post has been filled with articles about the April 28 events. Taken as a whole, I think they make for interesting reading. As a group, they tend to fill-in some of the blanks that they each have. Maybe just my own interpretation. Some samples:

 

This one calls into question what news reporting is meant to be. The government suggestion, if heeded, may help to eliminate confusion about the situation:

 

Lt-Gen Pisarn yesterday called on the local media to support military and police officers instead of taking the militants' side. ``We tried to negotiate but to no avail, so we had to use violence. We did our best. Please sympathise with us and report news for the benefit of our country,'' he said.

 

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This one shows that the police have some sophisticated intelligence gathering and access to little known facts:

 

Fourth Army chief Lt-Gen Pisarn Wattanawongkhiri said prior to the attack, the militants received ``Sue Poh'' blessings, which they believed would immortalise them.

 

They also drank holy water, which their leaders secretly laced with drugs to heighten their aggression, Lt-Gen Pisarn said.

 

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And this one suuggests that seeing may not be believing. It also shows the lengths that some Thais will go to in accepting full responsibility for their actions:

 

MEDIA BLUNDER

 

Newspapers urged to be more careful

 

The Thai Journalists Association has called on the media to be careful in their news coverage and the way they display photographs of the southern violence.

 

Bakban Boonlert, spokesman for the Thai Journalists Association, said the association was aware the media had to race against time to cover news about violent attacks in the deep South. However, it should be more careful in presenting news stories and photographs as the southern situation was a sensitive issue. The association's warning comes after Thai-language Krungthep Thurakij newspaper ran a digitally altered photo of Wednesday's violent clash in its April 29 publication.

 

The newspaper showed the photograph of a dead militant with a knife in his left hand. In fact, the man held a sheath, not a knife.

 

Krungthep Thurakij yesterday ran the original, unaltered photo the following day and apologised for displaying the ``wrong photo'', which it said resulted from production errors.

 

Duangkamol Chotana, editor of Krungthep Thurakij, told the association that the newspaper immediately took corrective action once it realised that a mistake was made to prevent public misunderstanding.

 

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:: :: :shhh:

[kamui]

CNN had a longer article yesterday which tries to give a broader view on the incident:

 

Thailand braces for revenge attacks

 

Friday, April 30, 2004 Posted: 0542 GMT (1342 HKT)

 

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Authorities in Thailand are bracing for possible revenge attacks after police killed more than 100 assailants in the predominantly Muslim south earlier this week.

 

Many of those killed in Wednesday's attacks were buried on Thursday with some relatives accusing police of using excessive force.

 

"These people only had machetes," Wahah Chemu, a relative of one of those killed, told the Associated Press.

"The authorities should not have retaliated with weapons of war."

 

A split has emerged between the country's prime minister and his security forces over who was primarily responsible for Wednesday's deadly fighting in which as many as 108 attackers, along with three police and a soldier, were killed.

 

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is placing the blame for the violence on criminal gangs trying to protect their illegal activities.

 

But his own defense minister and military top brass appear to contradict him, linking the attacks to Islamic separatists angry over their treatment in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

 

Vithaya Visetrat, a prominent Islamic cleric in the provincial capital of Pattani, said the crackdown could widen the scale of the conflict.

"It is the beginning of the people's war," he told The Associated Press.

 

Thaksin said on Wedesday that the attackers were motivated by crime.

"We will uproot them, depriving them of a chance to allude to issues of separatism and religion. In the end, they were all bandits," he told reporters.

 

But Thai Defence Minister Chettha Thanajaro said the attacks were carried out by Muslim separatists, adding that as many as 300 of them may have received training and assistance from abroad.

He described the attackers as "well trained" and said that worse was yet to come.

 

The government's top security adviser to the south, Gen. Kitti Rattanchaya, told The Associated Press on Friday that the violence had little to do with the drug trade and was the work of a growing but still shadowy movement that wants a separate Islamic state.

 

And a Muslim cleric arrested for leading one of the attacks clearly spelled out the objectives of the guerrillas.

"We are fighting for a separate Muslim state," Mama Matheeyoh told reporters as police escorted him handcuffed to the scene of an attack in Yala district. "We are not drug addicts and we did not get paid by anyone."

 

Thailand's Deputy Director of the Internal Security Command, General Panlop Pinmanee, said it was "absolutely certain" Wednesday's raids were mounted by separatists and that they were trained by militant groups operating in the south.

 

Gangs of machete-wielding youths, clad in black and wearing headbands, stormed 15 police and security bases or checkpoints at dawn on Wednesday in three Musln-dominated southern provinces -- Yala, Pattani and Songkhla.

 

Police and security -- who are believed to have received a tip-off the raids were going to happen -- opened fire on the attackers.

 

It is believed the raids were an apparent bid to seize weapons and ammunition.

 

Thai government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said the attacks were the work of gangs, including drug smugglers, trying to cover up their illegal activities.

"It looks like political maneuvering, [rather] than religious or ideological," Jakrapob said.

"Because the Muslims [in southern Thailand] are and have been very peaceful and moderate.

"They have no tendency of linking ... themselves and the so-called Muslim extremist groups outside Thailand."

"Local people trained to do these attacks and fighting, but we are seeking to find out who are the masterminds behind all this," Jakrapob said.

 

Others disagree.

 

While the southern region of Thailand region is a hotbed of crime, feeding off a lucrative cross-border smuggling trade with neighboring Malaysia, analysts say that does not explain why so many of Wednesday's attackers were young, Muslim and appeared ready to die.

 

"Those who died must have believed they were dying for their religion," Ahmad Somboon Bualang of Pattani's University of Prince Songkhla told Reuters.

"They must have had an ideology beyond separatism, otherwise why would they attack with their bare hands and swords?"

 

More than 150 people have died since unrest began in early January in Thailand's restive Muslim-dominated southern provinces, but Wednesday's violence is the worst single incident to date.

 

Bangkok has been facing mounting criticism over its handling of the violence amid fears that outside terrorist forces could be stirring the trouble.

 

Last week, 50 government buildings were torched in a single night and fears are growing that Thai citizens may soon become increasingly drawn into the violence.

[BelgianBoy]

Many of those killed in Wednesday's attacks were buried on Thursday with some relatives accusing police of using excessive force.

"These people only had machetes," Wahah Chemu, a relative of one of those killed, told the Associated Press.

"The authorities should not have retaliated with weapons of war."

 

Excessive ??? what a load of BS.....

 

So, in future, they should agree on weapons first, then meet, ask a referee, stop for lunch, and finish in a karaoke ????

Or the army should have used only the waterguns from songkran ?

 

Get real. Terorists attacked and were eliminated. over and out. next.

 

BB

[pattaya127]

over and out. next.

------------------------

not over, not out and next, more contradictions PM and Army, and same cluelessnes about the elusive leaders talked about.

 

But yes, progress has been made :: : bad teenage muslims were killed and many people are happy, never mind trying to understand what is going on in the south.

BB, terrorists have not attacked. You know their tactics very well, they cultivate the art of surprise and do not do it with machetes. This was just a bunch of pawns used as cannon fodder to exarcebate a situation that is getting worrysome.

[adikgede]

Get real. Terorists attacked and were eliminated. over and out. next.

 

Since when does attacking a manned police or military post constitute terrorism?

[adikgede]

from the Reuters Foundation

 

29 Apr 2004 08:30:35 GMT

ANALYSIS-Thailand faces long, hard fight in restive south

 

By Ed Cropley

 

BANGKOK, April 29 (Reuters) - Drug-crazed gangsters, militant Muslim separatists, or Osama bin Laden's latest foot soldiers?

 

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is in no doubt that the 107 machete-wielding, black-robed youths shot dead by security forces in the deep south on Wednesday were the former -- "bandits" pumped up on a cocktail of amphetamines and cough syrup.

 

But the southeast Asian nation's "CEO-style" premier and his army chief and cousin, General Chaiyasidh Shinawatra, are finding themselves increasingly alone in believing the roots of the unrest that has exploded since January lie solely in crime.

 

"What the two leaders do not see, or what they pretend not to see, is that this is not about addiction or banditry; this is about a fanatical ideology that none of us knew existed on such a grand scale," the Nation paper said in a front page editorial.

 

Thailand's impoverished and predominantly Muslim south is no stranger to political violence.

 

Plagued by a low-level insurgency throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the three southernmost, mainly Malay-speaking provinces have always felt remote from the rest of the Buddhist nation, particularly its sprawling and wealthy capital, Bangkok.

 

The spate of shootings and bombings since January have dented Thailand's carefully groomed tourist brochure image as the "Land of Smiles" and stoked fears of a revival in this movement that could exploit the disaffection of poor young Muslim men.

 

Photographs of dozens of dead Muslims, in headbands and with Islamic slogans on their clothes, killed in Wednesday's attacks on security posts raised an additional spectre -- are international militant networks such as southeast Asia's Jemaah Islamiah (JI) or even al Qaeda involved?

 

"Who are these people? That's the $64,000 question, and nobody is quite sure," said Steve Wilford, of security consultancy Control Risks Group in Singapore, although he added the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah could probably be ruled out.

 

"It's not their modus operandi. The targets weren't Western and if these guys really were suicidal, why not strap a few sticks of dynamite to them and get them to walk into a police station?"

 

LONG GUERRILLA FIGHT?

 

With conflicting and confusing noises coming from Bangkok, it was left to army General Pallop Piramee, who presided over a bloody shootout at a southern mosque, to suggest that security forces -- which lost five men on Wednesday -- were in for a long struggle with separatists.

 

"I would say the military phase has just started," he told a Bangkok radio station. "Our current estimate is that the strength of their armed men and recruits is in the thousands."

 

However, even this figure is totally at odds with independent assessments of the state of the region's known separatist movements, who are said to hate each other as much as they do Bangkok, and have membership in the dozens, not thousands.

 

"There is no united separatist front in the south. There are about five distinct groups but they are all pretty fragmented," said Andrew Tan of Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies.

 

"If you add them all up, it's no more than a couple of hundred, so getting together the sort of numbers we saw yesterday is shocking."

 

There is also the question of whether the militants -- whoever they might be -- are sheltering over the porous border with Malaysia, an accusation levelled by Bangkok that has raised diplomatic hackles in Kuala Lumpur.

 

In response to the violence, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi said Malaysian security forces had tightened security along the border, especially at entry points. He also said Thais fleeing crackdowns could pose security problems.

 

MORE TROOPS

 

Thaksin has responded by pouring two more battalions of troops into the forested and hilly region, which is already awash with extra police and security personnel, and reiterating calls for an urgent plan to develop the region.

 

The extra security kept a lid on trouble overnight, but some Muslim leaders had described the authorities' response as brutal.

 

Analysts said the violence -- especially the use of rockets, automatic weapons and teargas to storm the mosque -- would cloud relations between the army and Muslims for some time.

 

"This is a pretty bad blow for relations between the local Muslim community and the military, so I would expect to see more violence," said Wilford, adding that whoever masterminded the attacks would be likely to change tactics.

 

"I would also expect whoever is behind this to re-evaluate their operations, because this has been a massacre -- maybe a tactical change with more bombings, higher profile assassinations, or even taking the fight up to Bangkok."

[Guest]

The war on terrorism is like the war on crime - it just can not be won. In 1881 Geronomo, an American Indian, left the reservation. In 1886 he surrendered. At one time, half of the US army was after him plus part of the Mexican army - and this was only for a few Indians. People should learn from history so as not to repeat the same dumb patterns now.

[kamui]

BelgianBoy said:

Get real. Terorists attacked and were eliminated. over and out. next.

 

BB

 

If police are attacked, of course they had the right to defend themselves.

But as far as we know Thai military killed 30 Muslims hiding in a mosque and this is called a massacre in the media. This will almost probably make the Muslim terrorist movement much stronger. Like the US in Iraq the Thai government is breeding their own enemies.

 

Moreover this conflict seems to be decades old and we all know that this kind of conflict cannot be won with weapons but by bringing a higher standard of living to the people.

 

If I remember right there is an estimation that you need a ratio of 1:10 soldiers to fight guerrilla. If the conflict escalates Mr. T. will send more troops, the death toll will rise and the civilians will lose in any case.

None will win but both side will lose.

[BelgianBoy]

kamui said:

But as far as we know Thai military killed 30 Muslims hiding in a mosque and this is called a massacre in the media.

 

kamui,

 

I am always willing to trow stones in fixed windows, but please use correct terminology here.

 

Suddenly they are muslim, and no more terrorists ?

Hiding in a mosque.... and then ? did that stop crusaders in the past from killing ?

A massacre ??? that is when the other side has no chance, but 'they' started, no ?

 

So, according to you, it was ok for some muslim to attack soldiers, police, schools, monks, but not ok for the army to retaliate ?

 

BB