Thailand's cabinet has approved deployment of 2,760 additional locally-recruited paramilitary rangers, including a dozen platoons of woman rangers, to the country's southernmost provinces to carry out tactical missions in the turbulent region. Assistant government spokesman Natthawat Suthiyothin said the Cabinet decision for an additional deployment of army-trained rangers included 28 companies of rangers, plus 11 platoons of women rangers, to carry out missions in Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani with a Bt1.4 billion budget earmarked for this year, to be followed by an added Bt381 million budget for the following year.Rantburg has more on the violence in Thailand, including the death of yet another Thai policeman and the capture of three terrorists.
The paramilitary rangers, however, are generally younger and usually provide deeper local understanding than seasoned veterans reassigned from other parts of the country.
The nearly 2,800 rangers will serve under the command of the Fourth Army Region which is directly tasked with containing southern border unrest and combating insurgents. The rangers have been trained to operate with high degrees of flexibility and rapidness, especially in the mountainous, remote areas of the southernmost region. The Fourth Army began to deploy the rangers during the past few months as a supplementary tactical force.
Four more were added to the butcher's bill in yet another bombing. Oh, and another school was targeted and torched:
Suspected Muslim separatist rebels killed four people, including a district chief and an army colonel, in Thailand’s rebellious Muslim south, police said yesterday.One bomb was hidden in a tree near a tea shop, and the resulting explosion wounded 13 people.
One soldier was killed and two wounded late on Monday as they clashed with militants who set fire to a school in Pattani, one of three southernmost Thai provinces where more than 2,300 people have been killed in a three-year insurgency, police said.
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