STOP GLOBAL WARMING

Rebels staged an ambush and set off bombs
across southern Thailand in violence Wednesday that left 11 people dead, including two soldiers and five
suspected Muslim insurgents, police said. Five suspected Muslim insurgents were
shot dead in a gunbattle with Thai soldiers in a violence-wracked region of Yala Province,
said police Lt. Sompien Eksomya. Attackers opened fire on a unit of soldiers on
a search operation in the Bannang Sata district where Muslim insurgency has
been particularly active, he said. No soldiers were hurt in the hour-long
firefight. The fighting occurred after soldiers surrounded a neighborhood in
the district in a house-to-house search for suspected insurgents involved in a
bombing that killed seven soldiers in June, Sompien said. "They were
acting on a tip-off that these insurgents have been hiding in the
village," said Sompien. In separate violence in Yala, insurgents
shot at troops guarding a railway line, killing two soldiers, said provincial
police chief Col. Narasak Chiengsuk. Also Wednesday, at least three assailants
sprayed dozens of bullets into a house in Narathiwat province, killing two men,
said police Lt. Vorapong Klomsakun. In the same province, one person was killed
and six injured when a bomb exploded near a market, police said. Police said it
was one of six bombs that exploded in several areas of Narathiwat Wednesday
morning. Later Wednesday, a bomb went off at a police booth in Songkhla
province, killing one policeman and wounding nine others. More than 2,300
people have been killed in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Yala, Pattani
and Narathiwat and some parts of Songkhla since early 2004 when a separatist
movement flared up after a lull of more than two decades. Despite the latest
attacks, the military said the situation has improved. "Daily attacks are
gradually decreasing after we arrested a few hundred suspects," said Col.
Akara Thiprote, the army spokesman. Nearly 400 young Muslim men suspected of
involvement with the separatist movement have been arrested and detained during
the past few months.