Schoolchildren point to what remains of a building at Ban Sakadnak Wittaya School in Nakhon Ratchasima’s Soeng Sang district, which on Saturday became the latest target in a series of arson attacks in the North and Northeast.

List of schools that were torched

Education Minister Wijit Srisa-arn yesterday hinted that Saturday's fire at a Nakhon Ratchasima school could send a signal to the interim government and the Council for National Security (CNS) that the political situation is spinning out of control.

"In the South, people set fire to schools to get attention in defiance of the authorities," Wijit said.

The Ban Sakadnak Wittaya School was burnt down late Saturday night and an investigation is now ongoing to determine whether it was an act of arson.

It was the sixth school blaze in the Northeast in two months besides several other school fires in the North during the past three months.

Wijit yesterday said it was impossible that all of these schools caught fire because of electricity short-circuits. He also believed these cases were not linked to the ongoing violence in the South.

The education minister said he would ask police to increase patrols around schools.

Suporn Atthawong, a former Thai Rak Thai Party MP for the province, said he believed the school fire was intended to discredit him politically, as the school was located within his constituency. He said the fire would be used as an excuse by the CNS to maintain martial law in Nakhon Ratchasima and nearby provinces.

General Saphrang Kalayanamitr, a deputy Army commander and an assistant CNS chairman, said commanders of Second and Third Army Areas, which oversees the Northeast and North regions respectively, had been instructed to intensify their duties to minimise the chance of more school fires.

Third Army Area commander Lt-General Jiradej Khotcharat said he asked school principals and government agency heads to check out electrical equipment used on their premises and report any problems to him. "To prevent the claim that future fires are caused by an electrical short-circuit because of old equipment," he added.

Nakhon Ratchasima police chief Maj-General Amnat An-art-ngarm said police officers had now been dispatched to the relevant areas in a bid to gather information relating to the fire at the Ban Sakadnak Wittaya School.

He added that investigators would today summon local politicians as well as former Thai Rak Thai MP Suporn Atthawong, who represented the constituency where the Ban Sakadnak Wittaya School is located, to testify.

According to Major General Amnat, police are not giving special emphasis to the arson theory at this point, even though witnesses

testified they saw a pickup truck speeding away from the school just before the fire erupted.

"The incident took place at night and the witnesses were about 100 metres away. Aside from that, police immediately rushed to the school but found no vehicle travelling in the opposite lane," Amnat explained.

However, he said police had not yet ruled out arson.

Amnat said he now advised schools with old wooden buildings to contact police so that patrols would be stepped up in their areas.

He also called on people to alert police if they noticed strangers acting suspiciously around their areas. "Try to note down their vehicles' details, too, like the make, the colour and registration number," he said.

In a related development, a group of local teachers in Nakhon Ratchasima issued a statement condemning those behind the arson attack on Ban Sakadnak Wittaya School.

"We believe the fire has more to do with politics than electricity short-circuits or personal conflicts," the group's leader Wittaya Duangjai said.

He said school directors in Nakhon Ratchasima had earlier been told to step up security measures around their schools in the wake of intelligence reports that local schools would be targeted in arson attacks.

The group also urged police to determine the cause of the fire at the Ban Sakadnak Wittaya School.

Students at the school yesterday sat in their 'class' amid chilly winds under a structure with a roof - but no walls.

"I want to know why my school was burnt down. Now we are suffering from the cold weather and classrooms are squeezed into the same place. I can hardly concentrate on my studies because I can also hear teachers from other classrooms," primary student Patcharaporn Reraisanoi said.

Army Corps 3 commander Lt-General Sangkom Jantaratham said investigations were ongoing to determine whether last week's fires at schools in Tak and Nan were politically motivated.

"No matter what the result is, only a small number of people are behind the undercurrent and they cannot rival the majority of people who love the country," he said.