Women and children shot in bus massacre

Nine people, including four women and two teenage girls, were shot through the head yesterday in one of the most shocking attacks so far in Thailand’s worsening Islamic insurgency.
The victims were passengers on a commercial minibus in the far south, where more than 2,000 people have been murdered over the past three years.

According to the police, the dead included teachers, students, traders, farmers and a soldier. All were Buddhists, apart from the Muslim driver. Victims of the three-year Islamic insurgency have included monks, teachers and soldiers from the Buddhist north of the country, as well as Muslim villagers.

It is assumed that the aim of the attacks is to drive out Buddhist migrants and establish the three southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani as an independent sultanate.