112 KILLED IN THAI BATTLE

At least 112 people were killed in Thailand's Muslim-dominated south today
in what police claimed was an attempt by poorly armed teenage militants to
steal their weapons.

According to police accounts, officers were tipped off about the raids and
were waiting for the insurgents when they launched simultaneous attacks on
more than 15 police stations and village defence posts in the Yala, Pattani
and Songkhla provinces.

The militants - the majority aged between 15 and 20-years-old - were mostly
armed with machetes, though some had guns. Television footage showed the
bodies of insurgents lying in pools of blood in front of police stations.

Separatists in the region want to carve out a Muslim homeland in the
predominantly Buddhist country. There were claims from Muslim leaders that
many of the teenage insurgents were drug addicts.

The fighting lasted several hours until the firing of tear gas and
rocket-propelled grenades at a mosque brought it to an end. A group of 34
armed fighters, who had taken over the Kruesie mosque in Pattani town hours
after the violence erupted, were flushed out and shot, said local police
chief Major General Paithoon Pattanasoporn.

The Thai army said 107 of the dead were militants, while five police
officers and soldiers were also killed.

It was the bloodiest day of the year in the south of the country, where
almost daily attacks by gunmen had already left 160 people dead.

Gunfire could be heard as armoured personnel carriers drove down deserted
village streets and commandos ran through forest. Policemen and soldiers,
carrying automatic rifles, ran across streets and ditches in crouched position.

Thaksin Shinawatra, the Thai prime minister, denied the teenage insurgents
had links to international terrorism but said they did have powerful
backers. "They arrived at the target point with brand new motorcycles. This
proves they got financial support from influential figures, including
politicians and drug gangsters," he said.

The shooting shocked the residents and local leaders in the south.

Nimu Magajae, deputy chairman of the Yala Islamic council, said he was told
the attackers were drug addicts.

"This is the first time in my life that I have seen so many Muslim youths
killed in one day. But if they were drug addicts we do not regard them as
religious followers," he told the Associated Press.

"If they were really drug addicts and had the intention of killing police
and the police defended themselves, it is an appropriate act."

Mr Nimu demanded that the authorities hand over the dead bodies of the
relatives so that their burial could be performed within 24 hours, in
accordance with Islamic custom.

Muslims have long complained of discrimination in jobs and education in
Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, Thailand's only Muslim majority provinces.

They also say their culture and language are being subjugated by the
Buddhist Thais and cite as an example the state schools, which teach in
Thai. Muslims in the south speak Yawi, a dialect of Malay, spoken in
neighbouring Malaysia.

The sense of alienation caused by the central government's policies has
fuelled a decades old separatist struggle, which subsided after an amnesty
in the late 1980s before exploding this year into violence again with a
raid on an army arsenal in January.