| The old violence was getting stale anyway. |
A village chief and two other Buddhists were shot dead in southern Thailand in one of the bloodiest days of violence in recent weeks in the Muslim-dominated region, police said. The deaths, all in isolated attacks in Narathiwat province, came as security sources said they had arrested a prime suspect in the Islamist separatist insurgency which flared to life in January. Village headman Kliang Jankong, 52, was shot three times by unknown attackers in Bacho district after seeing his daughter off to school, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. "Police are convinced the killing was part of the ongoing violence in the southern provinces," Bacho police superintendent Colonel Somchai Sawasdisak said in a report. Somporn Nasanit, a 65-year-old retired headmaster, was gunned down in a village near Tak Bai town after attackers entered his convenience store posing as customers, police said. A third person, vendor Tan Khanchompoo, was shot dead while pushing his ice cream cart in Sungai Padi district, police said. Thai security sources said Wednesday that a prime suspect behind the violence, identified as Waeyuso Waedoramae, was arrested Tuesday night and was under interrogation at a military camp in Pattani. Thailand has made little headway in arresting the masterminds of the violence. The latest killings also came as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced that a soldier was now the main suspect in the accidental shooting death of a senior official in the south. | Senior officials being killed by accident, now that's big news |
Private Barney Fife Theradech Pongpetch has been charged with negligence resulting in the death of the deputy governor of Pattani province in a November shooting, an army official said. Officials originally thought deputy governor Soonthorn Litpakdi had been the target of an assassination attempt but later determined that the gun of a security official was fired by accident. | "accidently" killed the deputy governor, huh? |
A defense volunteer was earlier arrested for the shooting but has since been cleared. Theradech has pleaded innocent, an army official told AFP. |