With threats of more killings to come unless police and soldiers leave the area. “Worker beheaded in south Thailand,” from AP:
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Suspected Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand beheaded a man in a gruesome attack carried out in the presence of the victim’s daughter, police said Friday.
The man was identified as a 45-year-old Burmese worker at a prawn farm in the Nong Chik district of Pattani province, one of three Muslim-majority provinces in Thailand that has been gripped by a deadly insurgency since 2004.
Four armed men entered the prawn farm Thursday evening, blindfolded the man’s 16-year-old daughter and shot the man at close range before beheading him, said police Col. Thawan Nakarawong, head of the Nong Chik precinct.
The gunmen then picked up the head and drove about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to a site where they tried to blast it with a bomb, but the device failed to detonate, Thawan said.
“The insurgents left a note demanding that police and soldiers pull out from the area, otherwise they will kill more people,” Thawan said.
[…]
Drive-by shootings and bombings occur regularly in Thailand’s three restive provinces — Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat. More than two dozen people have been beheaded by suspected insurgents, but Thursday’s attack was the first beheading in months.