A Buddhist woman was shot and burned alive in Thailand's violence-torn Muslim-majority south on Wednesday, prompting angry protests in front of visiting army chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin.
Watcharaporn Boonmak, 26, was ambushed by gunmen as she rode her motorcycle through a Muslim village in Yala, one of the three southern provinces roiled by three years of separatist insurgency in which more than 2,000 people have been killed.
"She might have been shot in the stomach before they set fire to her and her motorcycle," a Yala police officer, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters by telephone.
One of her relatives told Reuters that witnesses at the scene heard Watcharaporn, a garage clerk, screaming and crawling along the road for help but nobody dared respond for fear of reprisals.
Even by the standards of a conflict that has seen well over a dozen civilians beheaded, it was a shocking incident.
"It is the most cruel and brutal thing I've seen in my life," Jaran Kongchuay said as he joined hundreds of Buddhists bearing Watcharaporn's charred body on a hospital stretcher to the provincial hall, demanding action from Sonthi.
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In 2002, the Thaksin government unleashed the military to suppress growing unrest and opposition in the south. In April 2004, the army slaughtered 112 unarmed Muslim youth in the centuries-old Krue Sae mosque, where they had taken refuge. In October 2004, at least 87 Muslim men died after being seized by soldiers during a protest at the Tak Bai police station. Most suffocated after being piled into the back of trucks on top of one another.
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