Violence continued to pound southern Thailand on Wednesday with at least 30 people killed in a shootout at a mosque near the southern Thai provincial town of Pattani, a top army general said.
"We are still counting but we've found 30 bodies so far," General Pallop Pinmanee, head of security for Thailand's three southernmost provinces, told Reuters.
The battle came after a series of dawn clashes between security forces and machete-wielding youths in the troubled Muslim south. Nearly 100 people died in the heaviest fighting yet in the south, officials said.
In a highly coordinated attack, mostly teenage militants stormed more than 15 police bases, village defense posts and district offices in Yala, Pattani and Songkhla provinces to try to steal weapons, said Lt. Gen. Proong Bunphandung, the chief of police for the south.
However, security forces - tipped in advance - were waiting for the poorly armed assailants, most of whom carried only machetes while some had guns, Proong said.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said 93 people were killed, but that the toll could rise to more than 100. State run Channel 9 television gave the breakdown of the dead as 90 insurgents, three policemen and one soldier.
It was the bloodiest day in the south where almost daily attacks by gunmen have left nearly 160 people dead this year. The government has blamed Islamic separatists seeking to carve a homeland in the Muslim-majority south of this predominantly Buddhist country.
"Most of the dead insurgent are youths of ages ranging from 15 to 20, but two of the leaders are aged about 50 and 60," Proong said, adding that four of the militants were taken alive. An Islamic leader said the attackers were apparently drug addicts.
Television news reports showed the bodies of insurgents lying in pools of blood, some of them in front of police stations clasping machetes and wearing camouflage.
Gunfire could be heard in the background as armored personnel carriers drove down deserted village streets and commandos ran through the forest. Policemen and soldiers, carrying automatic rifles, ran across streets and ditches in crouched position.
Defense Minister Gen. Chettha Thanajaro said the militants probably chose Wednesday morning for "the massive operation because they learned that the army will deploy more troops to the area to protect schools and teachers."
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 language. Muslims in the south speak Yawi, a dialect of Malay, spoken in the neighboring Malaysia.
The alienation caused by the central government's policies has been the source of a decades old separatist struggle, which had subsided after an amnesty in the late 1980s before exploding this year into a frenzy of violence with the army arsenal raid in January.
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