Thaksin: All of Thailand under govt control
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-09-22 13:57

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has insisted the entire country is under government control, one day after two soldiers taken hostage were beaten to death by muslim villagers, AFP reported.

"There is no liberated zone. Every square inch of Thailand must be under Thai constitution," he told a press conference.

On Wednesday, two Thai marines were beaten and stabbed to death, after an 18-hour hostage ordeal that pitted 2,000 Muslim villagers against the military in violence-wracked southern Narathiwat province.

Residents from Tanyong Limo sealed off the road to their village, calling for government soldiers deployed in the area to leave.

The bounded, gagged and blindfolded bodies of the marines were retrieved mid-afternoon Wednesday, but Thaksin said they may have already been dead for hours.

"The killers are inhumane. The soldiers were probably killed before dawn, because their bodies were already cold," he said.

The premier said officials had found clues to the killers' identities, based on television footage and their own investigations.

He urged residents in the Muslim-majority south to cooperate with authorities, promising they would be protected.

Thaksin blamed local authorities in the south for agreeing to the villagers's demand to speak to Malaysian journalists.

"I will ask local authorities why they decided to yield to the hostage-takers' demands. They should not get anything. I must say that there is no war without casualties, but I will try to limit the losses," he said.

The killings came amid escalating tensions over the southern unrest, blamed in part on Islamic separatists but also on organized crime and black marketeers.

At least 940 people have been killed in the Muslim-majority south along the Malaysian border since deadly unrest broke out in January 2004.

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