Ice cream vendor beheaded
Pastor Dale Morgan
Ice cream vendor beheaded*
From correspondents in Bangkok
February 01, 2007 07:51pm
Article from: Reuters
AN ice cream vendor was killed and his headless body left sitting on the
bicycle seat of his cart in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south today,
police said.
The vendor, a 45-year-old Buddhist originally from the country's
northeast, was shot three times in the back of his head while riding his
cart into a Muslim village in Pattani, one of the three provinces hit by
the violence, police said.
"They chopped his head off and walked away with it, leaving his body
sitting on the ice cream bike's seat," a Pattani policeman said by
telephone.
"Under current circumstances, he shouldn't have ventured into such a
village," the policeman said.
The man was killed just hours before Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont
flew to the region where 2000 people have been killed in a three-year
insurgency.
A police colonel was also shot in the head by a sniper while a security
team was visiting a village Surayud and Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn were
to visit, police said.
He was seriously wounded and rushed to hospital.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the violence which has seen almost
daily gun and bomb attacks in the three predominantly Muslim southern
provinces bordering Malaysia.
Thailand's military-appointed Government has embarked on a peace drive
in the Malay-speaking region, an independent sultanate until the
Buddhist-dominated Bangkok government annexed it a century ago.
But the attacks have continued.