Thaksin assumes emergency powers over Muslim south

Thaksin assumes emergency powers over Muslim south

Nopporn Wong-Anan, Reuters/Bangkok

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra assumed emergency powers on Friday after about 60 militants launched a dramatic attack on a town in the largely Muslim far south.

The powers, approved at an emergency cabinet meeting after two policemen were killed and 23 people wounded in Thursday night's attack on Yala, allow him to order phone taps, censor news reports and detain suspects without charge.

The "Emergency Powers Law" replaces localized martial law in the three southernmost provinces where more than 800 people have been killed in 19 months of violence.

"This law will, of course, restrict people's rights and liberty," Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters.

"It is a law to handle emergency situations that undermine national security and the wellbeing and safety of the public," he said of a decree which brings responsibility for security directly into the PM's office.

Southern police chief Adul Saengsingkaew told reporters that interrogations of arrested suspects suggested that about 60 people were involved in the orchestrated attacks on Yala.

Police were still checking closed circuit television in the hunt for the people who set off six bombs during a raid in which militant bombs caused an hour-long blackout.

In the darkness, gunmen on motorcycles fired at random and tossed petrol bombs into shops and houses. They also scattered metal spikes across three main roads to hinder the movement of security forces, police said.

Bombs hit a newly opened cinema complex, a hotel cafe, a karaoke restaurant and a convenience store almost simultaneously.

The new law allows Thaksin to ban newspaper, radio and television reports deemed "threatening to national security or causing public anxiety", according to a draft seen by Reuters.

As the cabinet meeting ended, a bomb exploded at a Yala restaurant, wounding four people and damaging two motorcycles, police said.

Two teachers were shot dead as they drove to work in neighboring Narathiwat province, they said.

Five policemen and three "bandits" were seriously wounded in the Yala clashes, Public Health Minister Suchai Charoenrattanakul told Channel 9 television. Only six people were still in hospital on Friday morning, he said.

Police said seven suspects were captured after the coordinated attack caught security forces by surprise in a region where most Muslims speak a Malay dialect and many cannot communicate in Thai.

"Our intelligence is very poor. We must improve it," Deputy Yala Governor Winyu Thongsakul told a Bangkok radio station.

There are 30,000 troops dealing with the latest bout of violence against the government of overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand in a region it annexed a century ago.

But analysts say the ease with which militants launch almost daily hit-and-run attacks suggests brute force will never win in the region, once an independent Muslim sultanate where militants fought a low-key separatist war in the 1970s and 1980s.