Malay Muslims deny Thailand’s Buddhist majority. 6 Buddhists gunned down in South Thailand by Islamic insurgents for Pan-Islamic Jihad. 2000 Buddhists killed in last six years in Thailand.

Thai Police carries the dead of Buddhist people gunned down by Muslim Jihadis on 1st Apri, 2010.

Thai police officers inspect the bodies of six Buddhists shot dead by suspected separatist militants in the restive southern province of Narathiwat. Ten police officers were also wounded by a roadside bomb in the latest attacks in Thailand’s restive south, police say.

Pic.^ (AFP/Madaree Tohlala)

Six killed in Thailand’s insurgency-plagued south

See original in : http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6302EI20100401

(Reuters) – Suspected Islamic insurgents shot dead six Buddhist villagers in Thailand’s restive south Thursday, police said, the latest attack in the troubled region bordering Malaysia.

The villagers in Narathiwat province were believed to have been ambushed, said police Colonel Sanit Suwanno. Two bodies were found in a pick-up truck and four were discovered in a hilly forest nearby, he added.

Ten policemen and soldiers were also wounded when a roadside bomb exploded as they were traveling to the scene of the shootings, police said.

More than 3,900 people have been killed in six years of unrest as ethnic Malay Muslims fight for autonomy from ……Pic.^ A Buddhist Monk in a protest in Bangkok Thailand’s Buddhist majority in the region just a few hours by car from some of Thailand’s best-known tourist beaches.

Local Muslims largely oppose the presence of tens of thousands of police, soldiers and state-armed Buddhist guards in rubber-rich region, which was part of a Malay Muslim sultanate until annexed by Thailand a century ago.

About 80 percent of Thailand’s three southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are Muslim.

The violence has ranged from drive-by shootings to bombings and beheadings. It often targets Buddhists and Muslims associated with the Thai state, such as police, Pic.^Army-Police deployments to check insurgency soldiers, government officials and teachers.

<<In a changed situation of Islamic expansion in Thailand, the Thai Muslim boys prefer wearing white robes to pray at  Islamic schools to learn the Islamic solidarity as seen here  in the village of Lam Mai, in the troubled Yala province in southern Thailand, March 31, 2010. Hundreds of Muslim boys from Thailand southern provinces but also some from other Asian countries live and learn the Koran at  schools built for them in the predominantly Muslim deep south of the country to ensure the Dar-ul-Islam in Thailand, replacing the Buddhist State in Thailand. [Pic. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj]

(Reporting by Surapan Boonthanom. Writing by Jason Szep)|| Courtesy : Reuters & AFP.

Posted by Upananda brahmachari.