8 Thai Soldiers Die in Ambush; Muslim Rebels Suspected

NARATHIWAT, Thailand, Jan. 14 -- Suspected Muslim insurgents ambushed an army patrol in Thailand's restive south Monday, killing all eight soldiers and then beheading one of them, in a rebellion that has entered its fifth year.

The soldiers were on a morning patrol when a bomb hidden on the road exploded and flipped their vehicle over, according to an army spokesman, Col. Akara Thiprote. The attackers, hiding in roadside brush, then opened fire, leaving no survivors, he said.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in the past four years in Thailand's southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat and some parts of neighboring Songkhla. Many in the predominantly Muslim area feel they are treated unfairly by the country's Buddhist majority.

The incident in Chanae district of Narathiwat province was one of the military's worst losses in the past year. It came a day after six suspected guerrillas escaped from jail.

More than 30 people have been decapitated during the insurgency, many of them civilians. The object appears to be to terrorize Buddhists into leaving the region.

The insurgents do not issue public statements, but researchers who have had contact with them believe they seek a separate Islamic state. The region was a sultanate until it was annexed by Thailand in the early 1900s, and most of its Muslim residents are ethnic Malays who have more in common with the people of neighboring Malaysia.

The degree of influence on the insurgents by outside Islamic extremist groups is still a matter of debate, though many experts agree that the rebellion is a homegrown reaction to decades of disenchantment over misrule and discrimination by Thailand's central government.

The insurgency flared on Jan. 4, 2004, with a raid by unidentified gunmen on an army weapons depot in Narathiwat in which four soldiers were killed and hundreds of guns were stolen. A government crackdown accelerated the violence, and the region was soon beset with drive-by shootings and small bombings. Most of those killed have been civilians.

Little progress has been made in curbing the violence despite the presence of nearly 40,000 police officers and soldiers in the region and several changes of military leadership and strategy.

Critics of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 coup, argue that his government exacerbated tensions with a hard-line approach. But the military-installed interim government that succeeded him has done no better after pledging to take a more nuanced approach that would not alienate southern Muslims.

[A bomb exploded at a southern Thai market Tuesday, injuring at least 27 people, officials said. The bomb was hidden in a motorcycle in the capital of Yala province. Officials suspect Muslim rebels.]