World in brief

70 killed in gunbattles in agitated southern Thailand

BANGKOK, Thailand - Suspected Islamic militants clashed with police in Thailand Wednesday, leaving at least 70 people dead in the heaviest fighting yet in the troubled Muslim-dominated south, officials said.

The clashes erupted after militants launched simultaneous attacks on police bases and checkpoints in several districts of Yala and Pattani provinces, said Yala Gov. Boonyasit Suwanarat.

He told reporters that most of the dead were young men attempting to steal weapons from police and army bases. At least three policemen and one soldier were also killed.

It was the worst fighting so far in the south where almost daily attacks by gunmen have left nearly 150 people dead this year.

Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are the only Muslim majority provinces in predominantly Buddhist Thailand. Muslims there have long complained of discrimination in jobs and education.

The central government policies have been the source of a decades old separatist struggle, which subsided after an amnesty in the late 1980s, but exploded again this year with the Jan. 4 raid on an army arsenal and the torching of 21 schools. Four soldiers were killed in the arsenal attack.

AMBON, Indonesia - Snipers spread terror across this provincial capital Tuesday in a third day of bloodshed that intensified fears the region could plunge back into a Muslim-Christian war that killed 9,000 people three years ago.

Gunmen killed two paramilitary police officers and critically wounded a third and a Muslim man later was incinerated by a bomb explosion, bringing the death toll since Sunday to 24.

The violence underscored the fragility of Malukus province, known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial rule and once held up as a model of religious harmony. Communal tensions worsened in recent decades with an influx of Muslims from elsewhere in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

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