Yala's authorities were afraid that the roadside demonstration around the coffin was improper as HRH Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn had sent a wreath to express his sympathy for the 26-year-old woman, who was shot dead and set on fire by suspected insurgents on Wednesday.

Protesters insisted that every inch of the land was part of the country and that the provincial authority was not in a position to suggest where the coffin should be.

Earlier yesterday they threatened to cremate Patcharaporn's body outside the provincial hall.

They also wanted to meet Army commander-in-chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin or Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont to demand an end to the government's conciliatory approach in the Muslim-majority region and to ask for the creation of Buddhist-only village militias.

Surayud has extended an olive branch to the Malay-speaking region in the hope that Muslims will provide government agencies with the identity of insurgents who are said to have set up cells in just about every village in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, as well as four Malay-speaking districts in Songkhla.

Human-rights advocates and residents said the government's strategy contradicted the actions of troops and rangers on the ground. They believe government security units have been behind a number of violent attacks and targeted killings in the past five weeks.

They pointed to the shooting and grenade attacks on Islamic boarding schools in Songkhla's Saba Yoi district, the Dawa Centre in Yala's Yaha district and Tambon Taseh in Yala's Muang district.

Activists and local Muslims accused the Army of paving the way for sectarian violence when spokesman Colonel Akara Thiproj defended Monday's incident in Tambon Kern Banglang in Yala's Bannang Sata district when a group of Buddhist village-defence volunteers shot dead four unarmed Muslim youths and injured six others.

In a related development, Bannang Sata district was still under siege yesterday with rangers at checkpoints authorised to decide who could enter or leave.

Electricity was still off yesterday morning but reconnected later while mobile-phone signals were also blocked for security reasons.

In Pattani's Mayor district, suspected insurgents torched a public elementary school in Ban La-nga, destroying four rooms of the one-storey building.

Villagers were seen putting out the fire and risking their lives by going into the school to save some of the teaching materials. The flames engulfed the school rapidly as it was mostly wooden, police said.

The Nation

Yala