Bombings, shootings and arson attacks claimed 56 lives last month in Thailand's three southernmost provinces, where insurgency-related violence has killed thousands over the past eight years, reports said Thursday, according to dpa. According to Deep South Watch, which monitors the southern insurgency, there were 73 acts of violence in March in the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, which border Malaysia. The fatalities were three policemen, nine soldiers, five defence volunteers, one student, five provincial officials, two government employees, one foreign labourer, 29 other civilians, and one suspected insurgent, said the agency, which works out of Prince Songkla Unviersity's Pattani Campus. Another 547 people were injured in the ongoing violence. In the most recent incident on Saturday three bombs exploded in Yala town, 800 kilometres south of Bangkok, leaving 11 dead and 10 wounded. An estimated 5,300 people have been killed and thousands more wounded since a long-simmering separatist insurgency flared up in 2004 in the region. The insurgents say they are fighting for the independence of the provinces, which are predominantly Muslim while the rest of the country is almost entirely Buddhist.
