Thailand’s army chief yesterday accused separatist militants of killing 11 people at a southern mosque, denying claims that security forces themselves were behind the attack.
The government ordered General Anupong Paojinda to fly to the volatile region a day after masked gunmen stormed the mosque in Narathiwat Province and sprayed worshippers with bullets during evening prayers.
Villagers blamed the military for the carnage, one of the worst attacks in a five-year insurgency that has left 3,700 people dead, but Anupong said rebels were trying to pin the blame on the authorities for the “barbaric act.”
“They absolutely want to raise this issue to a level of international concern, by making it seem like state authorities are violently cracking down on villagers,” he told reporters in Bangkok before leaving for Narathiwat.
“After the attack militants made false claims against the authorities. They want to terrify villagers by creating a climate of fear,” he said.
He later met regional army commanders, police and security forces from the three predominantly Muslim southern provinces at a military camp, but officials said he was not due to visit the attack site.
About 1,000 villagers gathered near the mosque in Cho-ai-rong district yesterday to view the scene and offer prayers for the victims, witnesses said.
Locals collected the bodies of eight of the dead, including the local imam, yesterday morning and took them to makeshift tents near the mosque to clean them for burial.
Several villagers said they believed security forces had carried out the raid, saying that the masked gunmen had attacked the mosque from several sides and that insurgents would not strike at a place of worship.
Human rights groups have previously accused Thai authorities of major abuses in the south, including the use of unnecessary force in the 2004 siege of a mosque in which 32 suspected insurgents were killed.
Sunai Phasuk, an expert on the unrest for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the government had failed to hold the military accountable and that the army was acting “almost as an autonomous power” in the south.
“It’s inevitable to have widespread suspicions among the Muslim population that the attack on the mosque last night was a kind of retaliation from the Thai security forces,” he said. “These areas are known to be in ... insurgent control.”
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