Special report: Crisis in Thailand

Special report: Snap general election in Thailand

Special report: Thai deputy PM appointed caretaker PM

    NARATHIWAT, Thailand, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's southernmost province of Narathiwat, located in a narrow peninsula between the Indian and Pacific Oceans while bordering Malaysia in the south, has remained in a new wave of violence since 30 months ago.

    "Since I came here two years ago, I never had a good dream," Kachonsad Bongana, a military security officer based in Narathiwat's Su-ngai Padi district, told Xinhua on Wednesday. "But don't misapprehend me. I've never been afraid of the violence. What just racks my brains is one question -- how can we win the heart of local people?"

    The Thai military has tightened the security level in the South by increasing village-patrol and road-checking. However, Kachonsad said the military means "could only prevent the attacks on skin, but it couldn't root up the terror motive inside."

    Since a group of southern insurgents forayed a military magazine in January 2004, a string of violence -- including ambush, shooting and bombing -- has been experienced in three southernmost provinces of Thailand, with some 1,300 people having been killed in the unrest.

    Just last month, a total of 50 bombs exploded simultaneously in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, causing dozens of casualties. Military sources said that more than 100 bombs have been smuggled into Narathiwat through the border, sending signals that the insurgents are planning more such attacks.

    Last week, caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Army Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratkalin as the top decision maker in the country's three troubled southernmost provinces, thus assigning the military a more arduous task.

    "Just as the commander said, we the military has to rely on political tactics, rather than military actions, in implementing state strategies to quell the spate of attacks in all the three provinces," local security-defender soldier Santi Kanphensri said, while sitting in a pick-up patrolling along the main road in Narathiwat on Wednesday afternoon.