Assailants decapitated an elderly Buddhist in Thailand’s Muslim south Saturday and vowed more such killings if Muslims continued to be arrested for the months-long unrest in the region, police said. It was the first decapitation in the violence, which has claimed some 190 lives since January, police said.
Sieng Patkaoe, 63, was attacked by men with machetes early Saturday as he tapped rubber trees on his plantation in the southern province of Narathiwat, district police said. Sieng’s severed head was left along a village road. His body, found some 60 metres away, had a note pinned to it threatening more killings, police said. "If innocent Malayu (the predominant ethnic group in the Muslim south) continue to be arrested, we will murder more Buddhists," police quoted the note as saying. It was written in Thai and printed by computer, they said.
The victim had no conflict with neighbours, police said. The killing marks a new level of brutality in the violence, mainly blamed on Muslim separatists, that has plagued southern Thailand this year. |