Thailand says arrests 3 Muslims for southern bombs

PATTANI, Thailand, Feb 20 (Reuters) Thai security forces have arrested three Muslim men in connection with a series of bombs and shootings that killed eight people across the Muslim far south at the weekend, the region's military chief said today.

All three had confessed and been charged,Southern Army commander Lieutenant-General Viroach Buacharoon told a news conference. He declined to give details of the charges, or name the men.

He added that the men, who were in their 20s and 30s, had had ''intensive military training'' from a militant group called RKK, but again declined to give any details.

References to Runda Kumpalan Kecil -- which means ''Small Patrol Group'' in Malay -- first surfaced in a Bangkok Post report in January 2006. The report described RKK as one of several militant groups operating in the provinces near the Malaysian border.

The paper said the group used the home of an Islamic teacher called Amran Masor in Thailand's Pattani province as a training base.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in three years of separatist unrest in the three southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani, populated mainly by ethnic Malay Muslims and annexed by Buddhist Thailand a century ago.

Dozens of bombs exploded across the region on Sunday evening, killing eight people and wounding 50 in attacks that coincided with the start of Lunar New Year celebrations.

The day after the blasts, the army-appointed government in Bangkok admitted it had no idea who the masterminds were.

REUTERS MS PM1612