BANGKOK, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- About 80 Thai Muslim men suffocated after they were arrested in a clash with police and soldiers in southern Thailand, police and Justice Ministry officials said Tuesday, dramatically raising the stakes in a simmering conflict between the Buddhist-dominated government and the Islamic-majority deep south.
The clash took place in the far-southern province of Narathiwat on Monday, when between 2,000 and 3,000 mainly youthful protesters demanding the release of six suspected arms thieves hurled bottles and stones at police and set fires in front of a police station in the Tak Bai district.
Police and army troops responded with water cannon, tear gas and warning shots. Six of the protesters were killed by gunfire, and at least 300 youths were arrested.
The arrested youths were forced to strip to the waist, had their hands tied and were ordered to lay in the street until they were packed in closed trucks and taken on Monday night to the Thai army's Fourth Region headquarters in the neighboring province of Pattani.
According to Justice Ministry officials and Dr. Pornthip Rotchanasunan, the country's best-known forensic expert, about 80 of those arrested died of suffocation, believed to have been caused by their
overcrowding into the trucks en route to the army base.
Pornthip told a press conference in Pattani on Tuesday afternoon that 78 bodies examined by forensics experts were unmarked, and the fatalities were caused by the lack of fresh air in the closed, packed trucks.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra insisted to reporters that the six youths killed during the clash on Monday were not victims of gunfire from Thai police or army personnel.
He claimed they died as a result of "chaos" during the clash between the angry protesters and security forces. Witnesses said the men died of gunshot wounds.
The clash was touched off after the arrest of six people on charges that they stole and later sold guns to Muslim militants in Narathiwat. The guns had been provided to villagers as part of the government's effort to stamp out an Islamic insurgency that has flared frequently since January.
More than 300 soldiers, police, teachers and militants have been killed, and hundreds of schools and other government buildings have been burned this year in the communal violence, mostly in the three southernmost province of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala.
In the bloodiest incident, a total of 107 Muslim men were killed when they tried to attack heavily defended military and police positions in Narathiwat on April 28. Five police and soldiers died in the attacks.
Many of the young men died when Thai troops stormed a mosque where the militants had made a stand. Muslim leaders later accused Thai authorities of over-reacting and refusing to negotiate with the militants.
All three provinces have Muslim majorities and share a border with Malaysia. Residents of the three provinces have long complained of exploitation, discrimination and corruption by Thailand's Buddhist-dominated central government in Bangkok.
