Schools close, monks leave temple as tension mounts

Schools close, monks leave temple as tension mounts

More than 1,000 schools have closed and some monks began evacuating their temples as tensions intensified on Wednesday between Buddhists and Muslims in southern Thailand, officials and media reports said.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said local leaders from the Muslim-dominated south told him on Wednesday that some of the groups behind the escalating violence were receiving funds from abroad. He did not elaborate.

Public schools will remain closed this week while government officials discuss ways to increase security for teachers, some of whom have reported death threats against them.

In recent days, three Buddhist monks have been slashed to death by machete-wielding youths on motorcycles, three policemen have been shot to death and two Muslim students slashed by machete-wielding assailants.

On Wednesday, a 52-year-old policeman, Sgt. Maj. Suphat Poptrakul was shot three times in the neck as he drove home on his motorcycle in Pattani province, police Capt. Pracha Chuaydee said in a telephone interview.

"He's in critical condition. Doctors are taking care of him now," Pracha said.

Such attacks have increased in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces since the Jan. 4 torching of 20 schools and a raid on a military armory that left four soldiers dead. The government has blamed the attack and other violence on militant Muslim separatists, with possible links to regional and international terror networks like al-Qaeda.

Radio and television reports on Wednesday said as many as 20 youths have been detained for questioning about the killings, but none has been charged.

The government has not arrested perpetrators of the recent violence, "because local people don't want to give us information or tips," Thaksin told reporters. He also admitted that government agencies in the south were not cooperating in the hunt.

"They accept that in fact there are groups causing the unrest, accepting money from abroad," Thaksin said after presiding over an annual conference of the country's local leaders, including those from the south.

According to English-language newspaper The Nation, some Buddhist monks in Narathiwat have evacuated their temples and were heading for safer places outside the troubled region. Other monks there and in other southern provinces have stopped making their traditional morning rounds to beg for food, the newspaper said. -- AP