Thailand | 4 men killed in raid in the south were not insurgents

Officials in Thailand’s violence-plagued south say four men who were killed during a recent raid by government security forces were not insurgents, and that the authorities involved should be prosecuted.
Police had said the four were killed and 22 other suspects detained on March 25 in the raid carried out by paramilitary troops, police and local officials in Thung Yangdaeng district of Pattani province.
More than 5,000 people have been killed since an Islamic insurgency erupted in 2004 in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, which are the only Muslim-majority areas in the predominantly Buddhist country.
Pattani governor Weerapong Kaewsuwan said yesterday that a fact-finding committee led by a provincial Islamic leader found that the four dead men were neither insurgents nor their sympathizers. AP

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