Muslim detainees killed in Thailand

PATTANI, Thailand – At least 78 Muslim detainees suffocated or were crushed to death after police rounded up 1,300 people and packed them into trucks following a riot in southern Thailand. Islamic leaders accused troops Tuesday of overreacting and warned the deaths could worsen sectarian violence.

The arrests followed a melee outside a police station, where protesters had demanded the release of six Muslim men accused of giving weapons to Islamic separatists. Six people were shot to death during the riot Monday, apparently by security forces, while another person who was shot died later at hospital.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, speaking to reporters as rumors of the suffocations circulated but before the 78 deaths were officially announced, tried to blame the casualties on dawn-to-dusk fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“There are some who died because they were fasting, and they were crammed in tight,” Thaksin said. “It’s a matter of their bodies becoming weak. Nobody did anything to them.”

But the death toll stunned moderate Muslim leaders who accused security forces of overreacting – a charge they have repeatedly made as the government has failed to halt the violence that has claimed more than 400 lives this year in the Muslim-dominated south.

“I am in shock,” Abdulraman Abdulsamad, chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, the province where the unrest occurred, told the Associated Press. “I cannot say what is going to happen, but I believe that hell will break out.”

Violence has troubled overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand’s three Muslim-majority southern provinces for decades, but it has worsened this year. Residents claim they are discriminated against by the central government.

As news of the tragedy spread, six people were shot and seriously wounded in separate attacks Tuesday. The victims included an assistant village chief and her husband.

The dead were among 1,300 people arrested after six hours of skirmishing with authorities. Witnesses saw the prisoners stripped to the waist with their hands tied behind their backs and herded onto trucks to be driven to army camps.