BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand's army said it was investigating a report that 40 people remained missing after a riot and the rounding up of Muslim protesters two weeks ago that left 87 people dead.
Families claim the men have been missing since October 25 when security forces broke up a protest at Tak Bai in the southern province of Narathiwat and piled hundreds of arrested men into army trucks, according to a Thai newspaper report.
Some 78 died mainly from suffocation and crushing in the trucks, according to officials, along with nine when troops and police broke up the riot with gunfire, tear gas and water cannon.
The army denied that it was hiding details of anybody who was missing. But an informed source in the region said: "According to army intelligence, there were about 20 people believed missing from the incident."
The source said the 20 did not include the 22 victims who remained unidentified following the tragedy at Tak Bai.
Army officials said the missing men could have left the area and passed into neighbouring Malaysia without telling their families.
"We don't have anybody that is missing up until now," army spokesman Colonel Somkuan Saengpataranetr told AFP. "We are trying to investigate but we have to ask the police to contact the families."
The bodies of the 22 unidentified men have already been buried but families were being shown photographs, according to the Bangkok Post newspaper.
The government has set up an independent commission to investigate the deaths of the 78, headed by a former parliamentary ombudsman, but a group representing Muslims in Thailand said Tuesday it was setting up its own inquiry.
"We found that some of our information did not match the information from the government. We need to find the truth," said Paisarn Promyong, deputy secretary of the Islamic Committee of Thailand.
Meanwhile, killings continued in the Muslim-majority south with a man and his wife, both Buddhist factory workers, shot dead as they travelled to work on Tuesday.
They were killed by two men riding a motorcycle, a common tactic used by militants in the region where more than 540 people have died this year in an insurgency that sparked back to life in January.
Only four percent of the population in predominantly Buddhist Thailand are Muslims, but they are in a majority in four southern provinces where separatists, religious extremists and the disaffected are fighting against the Thai authorities, according to analysts.
"Innocent people are in danger. Four to five people a day are shot now from one or two before," Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters on Tuesday.
11/09/2004 - 07:27 GMT - AFP