[LivinLOS]

Looks like this is really kicking off..

Emergency declared in Thailand

BANGKOK: -- Declaring "a time of national crisis" and appealing for unity, the Thai government took emergency action to cope with escalating violence in the mainly Muslim south after an assault by suspected insurgents on the provincial capital of Yala shocked authorities and residents alike.

The attack on Thursday night, in which two policemen were reported killed and 22 people injured, will revive critical scrutiny of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's handling of southern violence, which has claimed more than 800 lives since the start of 2004 and made Thailand a point of focus in the Muslim world.

As Thaksin and his ministers held an emergency cabinet meeting and the army commander flew south to the scene of the attack on Friday, another small bomb exploded near Yala's hospital, injuring four people, and two teachers were killed in neighboring Narathiwat Province.

"This is a time of national crisis. I would appeal to all Thai people to be united and to join hands to fight against the people who have bad intentions toward the country," Interior Minister Chidchai Wannasathit said Friday.

The government also adopted emergency powers Friday that allowed it to monitor telephones, halt distribution of newspapers or magazines considered threatening to national security and to detain suspects without charge. "The last straw that prompted us to impose this law was what happened at 7 p.m. in Yala," said Wissanu Krea-Ngam, the deputy prime minister.

In their attack Thursday, insurgents on motorcycles struck eight targets with bombs or Molotov cocktails. They started by knocking out a power station and plunging the city into darkness before using firebombs and shooting at targets, and scattering metal spikes behind them to slow security forces.

The targets included a hotel, two 7-Eleven convenience stores and locations close to a restaurant and a railway line, said the army commander in southern Thailand, Lieutenant General Kwanchart Kraham. These were usually crowded with civilians, "so we can say the troublemakers targeted innocent people," he said.

Several thousand students and residents marched through Yala on Friday in a protest reportedly organized by town authorities. Marchers carried placards condemning the violence and calling for peace.

"This is one of the worst attacks," said S.P. Harish at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. The careful planning and coordination behind the attack showed that "whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing and what they wanted to achieve."

The same cannot be said for the government, Harish added. "It's almost as if they have no clue as to what's happening," Harish said.

Thaksin has offered political and military initiatives in response to criticism at home and abroad that the harsh tactics he favored were only worsening the problem and threatening to turn a local conflict into an international problem.

The Yala attack, however, reinforced warnings from influential public figures that not enough was being done to contain or end the violence.

"If the government cannot halt daily atrocities in the region within a short time, it will be the government's failure," said Anand Panyarachun, a former prime minister appointed by Thaksin to lead a National Reconciliation Commission charged with formulating strategies for defusing the conflict.

--International Herald Tribune 2005-07-16