January 5, 2005

Weapons raid remembered

Assistant village head killed in latest attack

POST REPORTERS

Violence continued in the deep South as authorities held a merit-making ceremony yesterday to mark the first anniversary of the looting of a weapons arsenal and the simultaneous torching of schools in Cho Airong district of Narathiwat which set off a wave of separatist violence.

Waewkaji Seera, an assistant village head of Ban Yaba in Narathiwat's Rueso district, was shot dead yesterday morning while he and his wife Seena Lai-on were riding a motorcycle to work at a rubber plantation.

Two men on a motorcycle followed them before firing shots at Mr Waewkaji on the Narathiwat-Rueso road, making him lose control of his vehicle, which skidded off a road and hit an electric pole, said Mrs Seena, who was unhurt.

The gunman fired another shot at him and fled after his wife screamed for help.

Police believe the shooting might be the work of insurgents wanting to create instability in the deep South and mark the first anniversary of the raid on a military camp in the southern province on the night of Jan 4 last year.

Yesterday's merit-making rite was held at the fourth development battalion in the Narathiwat Ratchanakharin army camp, the site of last year's armoury theft.

Four soldiers guarding the cache were also killed by the raiders.

The army lost 413 guns in the raid which have not been recovered.

At the same time, the insurgents set ablaze scores of schools and police checkpoints across the province. The attacks marked the onset of separatist-perpetrated shootings, often at random, and bombings rippling through the far South on a daily basis.

Organisers of yesterday's rite were nervous the event could be marred by separatist sabotage. The camp was heavily fortified and police set up roadblocks to prevent the possibility of symbolic assaults by the militants on the first anniversary of the Jan 4 violence.

About 200 army personnel and wives of the slain soldiers attended the memorial service.

Chalermchai Viroonpetch, chief of the 5th infantry company's forward command who presided over the rite, ordered army outposts in 13 districts of Narathiwat to beef up security.

He said intelligence reports had warned of a plan by the insurgents to strike the military units. Security would be stepped up at all the various armouries delineated ``red-zones'' and unauthorised access barred.

Maj-Gen Chalermchai said there was also a danger of insurgents getting hold of the camp map that would enable them to plot further raids.

Pol Maj-Gen Kamol Pothiyop, head of Narathiwat police, instructed police to strictly man all road checkpoints in their precincts, as the militants were reportedly threatening to murder more government officials and informers.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, meanwhile, envisaged a permanent military force being set up to exclusively deal with the unrest in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. The force would function with the deployment of high-calibre soldiers provided with generous welfare privileges.

He also commended the Southern Border Provinces Peace-building Command for making progress in easing tension in the region.

In Yala's Bannang Satang district, saboteurs set fire to the Nikhom Sangton-eng Pattana Paktai primary school on Monday night, destroying a building, two teachers' quarters and a science laboratory room.

More than 20 schools in the violence-prone provinces of Narathiwat and Yala have been closed indefinitely as teachers still fear for their safety after the fatal shooting of Pratheep Supong, a teacher at Ban Sakhor school in Muang district of Yala.