Bangkok: Three suspected insurgents were killed in a shoot-out with soldiers in Thailand’s restive deep south yesterday after a 12-hour stand-off at a house ended in bloodshed, police said.
Acting on a tip-off, soldiers surrounded a house where a group of suspected rebels — who are fighting for greater autonomy for the Muslim-majority southernmost region —w ere holed-up since the early hours of yesterday. “There was a long negotiation to persuade them to surrender,” a police official from Mayo district in Pattani province said,.
But the discussions collapsed and a prolonged firefight erupted, before heavily-armed security forces stormed the building, ending the incident 12 hours after it began. “Three insurgents were killed in the clash with soldiers... two others escaped,” he said, adding that several guns were abandoned by the suspects. Conflict analysts Deep South Watch say 6,300 people have been killed in a bitter, bloody and seemingly intractable 11-year insurgency mainly in Thailand’s southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala.
AFP
