Three boys killed in school attack in Thai south

Bangkok, Mar 18: Three teenaged boys were killed and seven wounded in a gun attack at an Islamic school in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south, officials said today.

Gunmen opened fire at the boarding school in Saba Yoi in southern Songkhla province, near the Malaysian border, late yesterday, a police officer told Reuters.

After the shooting almost 1,000 angry villagers blockaded the school, closed roads and prevented officials from inspecting the scene, police said.

Songkhla governor Sonthi Thechanand said officials were trying to negotiate access to the school, but villagers said they first wanted to bury the dead, two boys aged 17 and one 14.

Saba Yoi is one of several Songkhla districts into which violence has spilled from the three southernmost provinces hit by a three-year separatist insurgency.

Rebels have targeted government offices, schools and businesses in attacks that have killed more than 2,000 people, many of them Muslims.

The insurgency in the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat -- an Islamic sultanate until annexed by Bangkok a century ago -- has shown no signs of abating since a September 19 coup led by a Muslim general.

On Thursday authorities imposed a curfew on the Yala districts of Bannangsta and Yaha where suspected militants killed eight people in an ambush on a civilian minibus on Wednesday.

The minibus attack infuriated Buddhists, a minority in the far south, where Muslims who speak a Malay dialect have long complained about being treated as second-class citizens.

A military crackdown would be popular among Thailand's overwhelming Buddhist majority, even though the government installed after a bloodless coup in September says it is pursuing a policy of reconciliation to restore peace.

Reuters