Police say a suspected Muslim separatist and his 6-year-old son have been shot dead in a rubber plantation in southern Thailand, the latest in series of violent attacks.
Mooktar Ali Mama, 31, and his son Lukman died in Yala province on Thursday afternoon, according to Police Colonel Sukol Sri-arun.
Mooktar, an alleged member of the separatist insurgency plaguing the region, was killed on the spot while his son passed away while being transferred to the district hospital.
Sri-arun told the Anadolu Agency on Friday that the likely cause of the shooting was a disagreement between Mooktar and other rebels. He noted that besides being involved in the insurgency, Mooktar was also active in drug trafficking and illegal deforestation.
Lt. General Charin Amornkaew, director of the Centre for the Enforcement of Human Rights Law and Forensic Science, told the Anadolu Agency recently that it is often difficult to ascertain the motivation behind some southern violence as criminality is often confused with insurgency.
This incident happened shortly after an assistant village chief was shot dead in neighboring Pattani province while leaving a Mosque.
Thailand's three Muslim-dominated southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat have been wracked by a Muslim insurgency since Siam (the name of Thailand pre-1939) took control of what was then a Malay Sultanate following an Anglo-Siamese treaty in 1907.
The insurgency became a full-blown civil war in the 1960s when the Bangkok government tried to control education in the region's Islamic schools.
In January 2004, a rejuvenated insurgency movement launched a series of attacks that shook up the Thai State. Since then bomb attacks, drive-by shootings and ambushes have happened on an almost daily basis.
