SOUTHERN VIOLENCE / ROYAL VISIT, WOMEN RANGERS IN TRAINING

Crown Prince visiting deep South

POST REPORTERS

His Royal Highness Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, accompanied by HRH Princess Srirasm, arrived in Hat Yai district in Songkhla last night, beginning a four-day visit to the restive South. The Crown Prince will hand over 80.9 million baht in donations, raised from the recent special flight he piloted, to hospitals in the South to buy medical equipment.

His visit will include the three southernmost provinces Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.

He was met at Hat Yai airport by Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont and army chief and chairman of the Council for National Security Gen Sonthi Boonyaratkalin.

Gen Surayud announced that school administrators had been authorised to begin school breaks ahead of schedule for safety reasons.

Meanwhile, two ice-cream vendors were killed, and one of them beheaded, in separate attacks in Pattani and Yala yesterday.

Vendor Weerachai Uttaraniyoung, 45, was shot eight times by two drive-by gunmen as he was driving his motorcycle, and then decapitated, in Ban Gueya in Pattani's Muang district yesterday.

The other vendor, Thanakrit Thammasuth, was shot on the Yala-Kota Baru highway in Yala's Muang district.

Gunmen also shot two rubber tappers, killing a man and seriously injuring his wife, in Yala's Bannang Sata district.

In Yala, militants seriously wounded a deputy commander of border patrol police forces as he travelled to a border patrol police school in Yaha district.

In the same district, a village headman's assistant was shot and wounded.

In Raman district, the 41st Ranger Regiment began training a 72-member all-female ranger force at Wang Phraya military camp in psychological operations, negotiation and crowd control.

The course is a response to the new insurgent tactic of organising women and children to rally in protest for release of detained suspects.

In Pattani, a patrol from Ingkayutthaboriharn military camp was ambushed with a roadside bomb in Mai Kaen district. No one was injured.

Bangkok Post
Friday February 02, 2007