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Published on July 27, 2007

Sgt-Major Chanat Phoo-thongtip and Private Kittikhun Chaiyaset were wounded when a bomb detonated on a back road in Khok Pho district. The soldiers were part of a security unit that included four police officers, all of whom escaped injury.

The incident came as Prof Din Syamsuddin, chairman of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organisation, was making his second visit to the region to encourage more people-to-people ex-changes between Muslims and non-Muslims of both countries.

Syamsuddin met with the chief of the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, Pranai Suwannarat, the governors of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat and Islamic religious leaders from five southern border provinces.

Syamruddin encouraged local communities to work for peace.

In a related development, Army spokesman Colonel Acra Thiproch said 154 people were being held under the emergency law that permits detention without trial. Authorities believe the individuals to be insurgent sympathisers and some militants.

They were detained in

an ongoing sweep through pockets known to harbour insurgents.

He dismissed suggestions they were being mistreated and added that members were permitted to visit regularly.

Meanwhile, Her Majesty the Queen ordered the Royal Household Bureau to send rice and dried food to some 350 monks who arrived in the region yesterday for this year's Buddhist Lent. General Napol Boontab, director of royally sponsored projects, said 350 monks travelled to stay at temples in Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and Songkhla to support Buddhists there.

The insurgency has claimed more than 2,400 lives since January 2004 and forced monks and laymen to relocate.

Meanwhile, in Nakhon Ratchasima, Ninth Region police commissioner Lt-General Chumpon Perngsiri said military weapons left over from decades of civil war in Cambodia continued to enter southern Thailand.

Prices for automatic weapons are about Bt4,000. The weapons are smuggled along the border mostly by pickup. Weapons are concealed, sometimes in coffins, he said.

The Nation

PATTANI