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Man beheaded in front of shop
22/06/2005 12:01 - (SA)
Bangkok - A man was beheaded in front of customers at a teashop on Wednesday in the latest apparent attack by Islamic separatists in Thailand's Muslim-dominated south.
The beheading in Narathiwat province was the fifth in just over two weeks and apparently the first to be carried out in broad daylight.
The victim, Lek Pongpa, 34, was a clothes vendor, said police Lieutenant Wattana Ketamphai.
He said the man was shot twice before his head was cut off in front of three customers.
The attacker, a suspected Muslim insurgent, then put the head in a sack which he dumped on a road in Joh Irong district about 2km away, said Wattana.
On Saturday, the beheaded bodies of a Laotian couple, migrant workers, were found in Pattani, which along Narathiwat and Yala provinces has been the scene of intense sectarian violence that has claimed about 880 lives since January last year.
The provinces bordering Malaysia are the only predominantly Islamic areas in Buddhist-majority Thailand and southern Muslims often complain of discrimination, particularly in jobs and education.
On June 15, the head of a 65-year-old retired Buddhist school teacher was found in Pattani.
And on June 6, as a delegation from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference was touring the troubled region to probe the causes of the violence, a Thai Buddhist rubber plantation worker was beheaded in Yala.
Notes left with the bodies in several cases claimed the actions to be revenge for alleged repression by Thai authorities. While the beheadings may have been inspired by those in Iraq, Thai officials believe they are primarily meant to terrorise the minority Buddhist population in the south into moving away.
Most killings by insurgents have been drive by shootings, though small bombs have also been responsible for many casualties, especially among security forces.
On Tuesday, suspected Islamic militants stormed a house and killed three fellow Muslims at evening prayers in an apparent attempt to intimidate government sympathisers and garner support for a the separatist movement, according to police.
The country's southernmost provinces used to be an independent Muslim principality before being annexed by Thailand in 1902.
Resentment against the central government gave rise to an armed separatist movement that subsided in the late 1980s after a government amnesty.
Last year there were three beheadings in the restive area, one in May and two in November.
- AP
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