Thai forces accused of brutality in mosque battle

The general in charge of the operation said he had no choice but to use extreme force because his men were surrounded by a swelling crowd of angry onlookers.

Some at a hastily convened meeting of community leaders in the provincial town of Pattani -- the scene of the gunbattle -- had little sympathy with the militants, who they said were merely outside gangsters, echoing the views of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The mosque shootout was the most serious of around 15 clashes across the predominantly Muslim region on Wednesday that claimed the lives of 107 machete-wielding militants and five members of the security forces.

Some Muslim leaders said troops who had surrounded the mosque should have tried to negotiate a surrender rather than attack the defenders with rockets, tear gas and automatic weapons.

"Some people thought this was an over-reaction by the authorities because they believed the people inside the mosque were about to surrender," said Uma Meah, secretary of the Central Islamic Committee of Pattani.

"If the officers had waited for another couple of days they could have caught them alive, but they didn't. They killed them all.

"The other view was a feeling of indifference towards this incident, because the dead people were bandits and the security forces had to defend themselves," he said.

The motives of the black-clad, poorly armed and apparently suicidal youths, some of them bearing Islamic emblems, remain a mystery.

However, government and army officials have started to say the sharp rise in violence could signal the return of a Muslim separatist rebellion that plagued the impoverished and poorly developed region throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

General Panlop Pinmanee, who gave the orders to storm the mosque, told a Bangkok radio station he had had no choice but to open fire since his troops were surrounded by an angry crowd.

"As the mob outside was allowed to swell into thousands, and the stand-off was allowed to drag on, the situation could have got out of control," Panlop said.

"I could not risk the lives of our forces in that scenario. I had no choice but to disobey the instructions of my superior not to storm the mosque. I would not have made the decision if the swelling mob had not forced my hand," he said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BKK204224.htm