Schools closed across southern Thailand amid mounting ethnic violence

BANGKOK Jan 27 - Thailand ordered massive school closures across its Muslim-majority south Tuesday as the region grappled with an eruption of violence against government targets and Buddhist monks.

All 248 schools in Narathiwat province were closed and at least 40 percent of schools in two other provinces were shut down after emergency meetings to discuss the crisis.

``We have decided to close all schools in Narathiwat for three days until Friday, as there is concern about rumours of possible attacks and abduction'' of students and teachers, the province's teachers' council said in statement.

The decision affects all public and private primary and secondary schools, said Narathiwat teacher Adisak Apiraksakul who attended the meeting Tuesday.

``We had heard that there were plans to abduct a teacher in Bacho district'' in Narathiwat, Adisak said.

Earlier Tuesday deputy education minister Sirikorn Maneerin's said she had authorised school administrators in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala - which all border Malaysia - to to shut down schools if they felt threatened.

``As of now some 40 percent of schools in those three provinces have closed,'' she told reporters.

The provinces have this month witnessed a wave of attacks on soldiers, police and Buddhist monks who have reportedly begun asking to leave the deep south following the brutal murders of three monks as they walked in public receiving alms.

The Bangkok Post said the monks had requested a reassignment from their temples in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, and that temples had asked for police protection.

This spate of attacks in the region, home to a long-running but now considerably weakened separatist movement, began on January 4 with a raid on an army depot in Narathiwat that killed four soldiers, and simultaneous arson attacks on 18 schools and two police checkpoints.

Two police officers were killed the next day by a bomb in Pattani.

One monk was murdered last Thursday in Narathiwat, followed by the killings of two more on Saturday in Yala, where a policeman was also shot dead.

The government has fumbled in its attempts to say who it believes is to blame for the ongoing violence, variously saying bandits, separatists and ``mujahedin'' are responsible.

For several years school teachers in the south, seen as representatives of the Bangkok government, have been targets of violent attacks but attacks on Buddhist monks were previously unheard of.

Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra warned Monday that the first curfew in some two decades could be clamped on the region if the violence was not halted. - AFP