Thai authority guarantees justice for those mistakenly killed by soldiers

PATTANI, March 21 (TNA) - Commanding General of Thailand's 4th Army Area Command Lieutenant General Udomchai Thammasarorat vowed Wednesday to guarantee justice for relatives of four villagers whom soldiers shot dead in Nong Chik district of the southernmost Pattani province on January 29, after an official fact-finding committee had concluded that the government's security officers really killed the people wrongfully. In response to the recent conclusion on the killing of the four villagers on their vehicle on Highway 43 in Baan Kayi of Bulopuyo sub-district, Lieutenant General Udomchai told a press conference at a security outpost in Pattani that the military has accepted the finding of the fact-finding committee and has offered fair and quick compensation, promising that the wrongdoing soldiers will face legal action and the Thai military will impose measures to prevent any repeated incident in the future. After the press conference, the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC) initially handed out a cash compensation of 400,000 baht each to relatives of the killed villagers. However, the late January attack also injured four other villagers. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Sukumpol Suwanatat insisted that the Thai military took responsibility for the incident, after it was proved that the killed villagers were not suspected insurgents, acknowledging, however, that the concerned soldiers conducted their normal security measures, and that in any security operation, soldiers normally risk their lives and have been killed almost daily in Thailand's insurgency-plagued southern border region. The defence minister said he hopes that stricter checks on people's vehicles, mobile phones and ID cards should improve the security situation in the troubled Thai far South. In Narathiwat province Wednesday morning, a bomb blast killed a paramilitary ranger, identified as Somchai Khamjun, and injured three villagers in Baan Buera-ngae of Cho Airong district. The bomb, weighing five kilograms and packed in a steel box, was planted on a pillar of a railway bridge and was detonated with a communication radio when a group of security officers on patrol was passing the location. (TNA)