Gunmen kill ten people in Thai mosque

June 8, 2009

According to police reports, at least ten people have been killed by militant gunmen in a mosque in the Cho-ai-rong district of the Narathiwat province in southern Thailand on Monday. Nineteen other people were wounded in the attack, thirteen of them critically.

Five or six gunmen, armed with assault rifles, came into the mosque during evening prayers and opened fire. "They opened fire indiscriminately at about 50 worshipers inside the mosque," said a police official to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The incident is one of the most deadly attacks in the country ever since a separatist Islamic insurgency was created in southern Thailand in 2004. Since then, over 3,400 people have been killed in violence.