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| Southeast Asia | ||||
| Bomb attack in southern Thailand | ||||
| 2005-02-17 | ||||
| A bomb in southern Thailand has killed four people and injured at least 35, as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited the troubled region. The bomb exploded in the border town of Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat province at 1905pm (1205GMT), police said. It came hours after Mr Thaksin said he would use military muscle and economic sanctions to punish those villages that were sympathetic to Islamic rebels. Local leaders in the largely Muslim region strongly criticised the plan.
The bomb was planted in a car parked near the Marina Hotel, said police spokesman Nawin Nilwanith. Sungai Kolok is a popular tourist town on the border with Malaysia. It is not the first time the town has been the target of a suspected militant attack. The bombing came as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was touring the country's Muslim-dominated south, the scene of sectarian violence which has claimed more than 550 lives since January last year. During Thursday's tour, Mr Thaksin outlined his latest plans to tackle the ongoing violence - plans which the BBC's correspondent in Bangkok, Kylie Morris, says are his most controversial yet.
Some 1,580 southern villages have been surveyed for their co-operation with the government, and categorised as red, yellow or green, depending on the degree of violence found there. Villages are designated as red if they are frequently violent, if they refuse to co-operate with the authorities, and if more than half the residents are judged to be sympathetic to the aims of the insurgents. Three hundred and fifty-eight villages are cited as red zones, including 200 in the province of Narathiwat. Mr Thaksin has said he will give more than $500m to villages across the country within the next 10 weeks, and each community's quota will depend on its colour code. Red zone villages will not get any money. "We don't give money to those red villages because we don't want them to spend the money on explosives, road spikes or assassins," Mr Thaksin told villagers in Narathiwat. "If the money sanctions do not work, I will send soldiers to lay siege to the red zone villages and put more pressure on them," he added. "I will never allow anyone to separate even one square inch from this country, even though this land will have to be soaked with blood. So I'd like everyone to be friends with me. Don't be friends with bad guys," he said.
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| Posted by:Steve |
| #2 OP---it seems to me that the main problems that we are having with radical Islam has to do with places that the Wahabbists have funded with mosques and Madarassas. Gotta read the Freedom House paper on the Saudi hate literature in the US. We need to confront the Saudis publically on this. SoState Powell played too much footsie with the Saudis. They are the real enemy. How to do this is one thing, but their hate funding worldwide needs to be called. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-02-17 10:29:57 PM |
| #1 One of the biggest problems with dealing with Muslim extremists is that we continue to act in a "civilized" manner in waging this war. In places like Thailand, the gloves should indeed come off, and the extremists and their backers treated the same way they treat the Thais. Murdering Buddhist monks should be countered by destroying mosques. I think the violence will escalate for a bit, then die down to nothing - especially if the mosque destruction is always carried out on a Friday afternoon. You can't fight barbarians with civilized methods. You either kill them or destroy them - nothing else works. If they don't want to die, they'll stop acting like barbarians. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2005-02-17 10:21:40 PM |