Suspected Muslim separatists kill 2 soldiers in southern Thailand

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Suspected Muslim separatists gunned down two government soldiers on a motorcycle patrol in southern Thailand on Saturday, police said. The gunmen opened fire from the back of a truck with assault rifles, killing the two privates in the province of Pattani, one of the most violent areas of the Muslim-dominated south, police Col. Narucha Suwanalapha said. The victims were members of a four-man patrol, Narucha said. The suspected insurgents allowed the first of two motorcycles to pull ahead and fired on the second, killing the two soldiers and seizing their M-16 rifles before fleeing, he said. More than 3,300 people have died since early 2004, when a separatist movement flared up after a lull of several decades. Since then, there have been almost daily bombings or shootings, most of them blamed on the shadowy insurgents.