NARATHIWAT -- Suspected militants sprayed worshippers with bullets at a mosque in Thailand's restive Muslim-majority south Monday, killing 11 people and wounding another 12, officials said.
Gunmen armed with assault rifles stormed into the mosque in troubled Narathiwat province during evening prayers and opened fire "indiscriminately", the army and police said.
The attack was one of the bloodiest for months in the region bordering Malaysia and comes amid a sudden flare-up in a five-year insurgency that has left 3,700 people dead.
"They opened fire indiscriminately at about 50 worshippers inside the mosque,'' a police official said on condition of anonymity, adding that the dead included the local imam or prayer leader.
He said that up to five gunmen were involved and that they entered the mosque in Cho-ai-rong district through the back door.
Army spokesman Colonel Parinya Chaidilok, however, said there were two attackers, one of whom entered through the front door of the building while the other came in by a side door before opening fire.
He confirmed that 10 people were killed instantly and another died on the way to the hospital, while the 12 wounded were all in critical condition.
Authorities have previously blamed most of the violence in the deep south on shadowy, separatist Muslim militants.
Parinya said that the identities of the attackers in Monday's incident were not yet known, but that by attacking a mosque they appeared to be trying to pin the blame on Thai security forces.
"They are trying to make it look like the attackers are the authorities, because Muslims would apparently not shoot inside a mosque. But it's impossible that it is the work of the military,'' he said.
Earlier Monday a soldier was killed by a bomb blast and militants shot dead a rubber-tapper in Narathiwat, while on Sunday a huge bomb killed two people and destroyed several nearby buildings in the same province.
The mosque attack comes just three days after Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva met with top brass to discuss the government's strategy for dealing with the half-decade of violence.
Abhisit last week defended his government's handling of the situation in the south since he took power in December. The region is a stronghold of his Democrat Party but his administration has failed to curb the bloodshed.
In April the government agreed to extend emergency rule for another three months in the region, despite a promise by Abhisit in January to end the measures and investigate claims of rights abuses by the military.
A state of emergency has been in place since July 2005 across Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces, giving security forces sweeping powers of search and seizure and broad immunity from prosecution.
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- Writer: AFP
