US death squads in Thailand? Two US marines taken hostage and killed.

~

One obstacle to American control of the Malacca Straits is Malaysia. Southern Thailand lies next to Malaysia.
Thailand, Malaysia, Malacca Straits


A secret US base on Phi Phi island 'provided protection for increased (and secretive) U.S. and British oil and gas exploration activity in the Andaman Sea off Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, and east India.'
Hundreds of US troops killed in Thailand?


http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/22/news/thai.php

Nick Cumming-Bruce, in the International Herald Tribune, 20 September 2005, reported on death squads in Thailand.

According to the International Herald Tribune:

There has been violence in Thailand's mainly Muslim southern provinces bordering Malaysia.

Two marines who had been taken hostage by villagers have been killed.

More than 900 people have died in the region in the past 20 months.

The casualties include more than 100 people killed in two actions by the military last year.

Many southerners believe others have been killed by military or police death squads.

The Thaksin government has lost the Muslim population in the south," said Thittinan Ponsudhirak, a political analyst and lecturer at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. "They are trying to contain a situation which is running out of control. We are heading for even worse trouble."

The marines, armed but working in plain clothes, were driving through the village of Tanyonglimo on Tuesday night soon after a drive-by shooting at the village tea shop in which two people were killed and three others wounded.

Villagers surrounded their car and seized the soldiers, who were then bound, gagged and blindfolded.

Thai analysts draw attention to parallels between events at Tanyonglimo and an incident last month in the village of Lahan, in the same province, when gunmen killed the local Muslim preacher.

Before he died, the preacher, Natsopa Yusof, had told villagers his killers were government troops. Local women and children then formed a cordon blocking off the village and refusing entry to security forces.



~~~~~