PATTANI, Thailand – The smell of blood hung over the Krue-Se mosque Thursday. The historic brick walls were marred by hundreds of bullet holes. The marble floors were gouged where rocket-propelled grenades had exploded. A torn and bloody Quran lay salvaged in the courtyard.
Here, 32 devout Muslims chose to die Wednesday in a hail of lead and shrapnel rather than surrender to police. A day later, thousands came to view the gruesome scene. To many, the dead were heroes.
“If they wanted to escape, they could have easily,” said Anek Wannailao, a regular worshiper at the mosque. “But they wanted to come here and create history.”
The men were among 108 Muslim militants who died Wednesday after attacking a dozen police stations and checkpoints in southern Thailand in an attempt to steal firearms. Many of the rebels were armed only with machetes. Five police and soldiers also died.
The security forces, which had been alerted in advance to the simultaneous dawn assaults, gunned down many of the rebels as they attacked. Facing certain defeat, the 32 fighters retreated to the 16th-century mosque, one of the holiest Muslim sites in Thailand.
Shooing others out of the small brick building, the rebels took over the loudspeaker used for the call to prayer and urged their fellow Muslims to join them in devoting their lives to God, witnesses said.
“They said they were willing to sacrifice their life for their religion,” recounted Somprasong Tipyorea, a neighbor who watched the scene unfold. “They were given a chance to surrender, but the group was ready to die. They wanted to go to heaven.”
In Islam, as in many faiths, committing suicide is a sin. But dying in defense of the religion can earn a Muslim eternity in paradise.
“Dying like this is good dying,” said Tipyorea, who had never met any of the men. “As a Muslim, I’m proud of these guys. Nobody here had seen people die with dignity like that.”
Until this week, the rebels’ frequent military successes in the south kept them from having to make such a gesture. Since January, when the militants began launching a series of attacks, they have killed more than 60 police officers and officials and torched dozens of schools and other public buildings, while suffering few casualties.
The militants have broad support from Thailand’s 3 million Muslims, many of whom believe they are treated unfairly by the government. Authorities say the rebels’ aim is to win independence from Thailand for the predominantly Muslim region that borders Malaysia.
The shadowy rebel group has thousands of members, authorities say, and is led by militant Muslims who have fled to Saudi Arabia and Sweden, where they direct the military campaign by e-mail.
The rebels are organized in cells of about 18 members each and seldom know members of other cells, officials said. Most of Wednesday’s attackers were initially said to be teenagers, but Interior Minister Phokin Pollakul said on Thursday that most were adults.
The rebels who took over the Krue-Se mosque came from a distant village and were strangers to the mosque’s regular worshipers. They apparently chose Krue-Se to make their stand because of the building’s importance as one of the oldest mosques in the country.
Police and soldiers surrounded the building and called on the militants to surrender. Most of the fighters were lightly armed, but authorities were not eager to storm the building, and the standoff lasted for hours. Police called on the men to surrender and later fired tear gas into the mosque, but the rebels refused to come out.
Finally, security forces fired grenades into the building. In the close quarters of the mosque’s main room, the militants had no chance. By some accounts, the authorities waited two hours before storming the building. None of the rebels survived.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
