And policemen. “Three shot dead in Thai restive south,” from Reuters, August 14 (thanks to all who sent this in):
YALA Thailand (Reuters) – Three people, among them a policeman, were killed in Thailand’s troubled southern region Saturday in attacks blamed on Muslim separatists, police said.
A man and his wife were shot dead while riding a motorcycle to work in a rubber plantation in Yala, one of the three predominantly ethnic Malay Muslim provinces with a deep history of rebellion to the rule of faraway Bangkok.
In a separate attack in neighbouring Pattani province, a policeman was fatally shot by unknown gunmen while travelling to work. He later died in hospital, police told reporters.
More than 4,000 people have been killed in the last six years in the rubber-rich region bordering Malaysia, which was a Muslim sultanate until annexed in 1909 by Buddhist Thailand, which many locals say has long treated them like second-class citizens….
The pretexts shift, the jihad is constant.