PATTANI, Oct 26: A total of 85 Muslims died in military custody in southern Thailand, suffocated while being transported in trucks to an army barracks after a violent demonstration, officials said on Tuesday.
Only six people were previously believed to have been killed when troops and police opened fire to quell a riot outside a police station on Monday in the restive, Muslim-majority region.
The huge leap in the toll, and the manner of the deaths, are bound to add to tensions. One local Muslim scholar accused authorities of gassing the victims and called it a massacre.
Justice ministry official Manit Sutaporn said 85 people died of suffocation, making it the bloodiest day in the Buddhist kingdom since April 28, when troops and police shot dead 106 machete-wielding militants, also in the south.
"We found no wounds on their bodies," Manit told a news conference in Pattani, a provincial capital 1,100 km south of Bangkok, of the latest deaths.
He said the victims were among hundreds of Muslim men arrested after a 1,500-strong rally was dispersed outside a police station in Narathiwat province.
The deaths appear to have occurred while the detainees, who were stripped semi-naked after their arrest, were being taken by truck to barracks in Pattani, a journey that took five hours, Major-General Sinchai Nutsatit told the news conference.
"We have never seen this sort of torture in Thai history before. It is just like gassing them," said Ahmad Somboon Bualuang, an Islamic scholar from the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani province. "It is a deliberate massacre. They rounded protesters up and crammed them into closed trucks. They died from lack of air."
Troops and police fired live rounds, as well as water cannon and teargas, to end a six-hour standoff with the crowd, which was demanding the release of six villagers accused of handing over government-issue shotguns to Islamic militants.
Shots were also fired from the crowd, officials said, adding that some of the protesters were under the influence of drugs or were frail because of fasting.-Reuters