Suspected Islamic militants beheaded a Buddhist laborer in Thailand's tumultuous south, police said Tuesday, the second such killing in retaliation for the deaths of 85 Muslims at the hands of security forces last month.
The attackers left notes with the body of 60-year-old man threatening further revenge attacks. Officials identified the victim only as Kaew.
An analyst warned that the gruesome nature of the killing signaled that violence in the region had reached a new level of brutality.
At least 85 Muslim protesters died on Oct. 25 when security forces cracked down on a violent demonstration outside a police station in Narathiwat's Tak Bai district. Most of the victims suffocated or were crushed after they were arrested and crammed into army trucks.
The crackdown and deaths triggered a new round of violence in the Muslim-majority southern provinces, where a deadly separatist insurgency has simmered for years.
Thirty-six people — including 25 Buddhists — have been killed in bombings and shootings since the Tak Bai incident. More than 500 people have been killed this year.
The decapitated body was found Tuesday in a hut at the rubber plantation where Kaew worked in Changpeuk village in Narathiwat province, police Lt. Boonserm Klaewatee said.
Kaew's head had been slashed repeatedly, apparently by a machete, Klaewatee said.
"This is not enough," read one of the notes left with the body. "More will be killed in revenge for the innocents that were killed in the Tak Bai massacre."
Kaew is the third Buddhist man to be beheaded by suspected insurgents this year and the second apparently in retaliation for the Tak Bai incident. The head of a Buddhist village leader in Narathiwat was found Nov. 2.
Also Tuesday, a Buddhist couple — Srinuan Chindai and his wife Korn — were slain by a motorcycle-riding gunman in the Banangstar district of nearby Yala province, police Lt. Col. Jakarin Bampensamai said.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, an assistant professor of international relations at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, said the recent beheadings indicated the depth of anger felt by some Muslims in the south.
"The gruesome fashion of these violent attacks by presumably Muslim assailants — this is not normal violence, it is driven by deep animosity and hatred," he said. "After Tak Bai, a lot of the violence has to be seen in that context."
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said the insurgents are arming themselves by stealing guns that the government originally handed out to local officials to defend themselves.
He spoke hours after groups of three to four masked men stormed the houses of village security guards and chiefs in Pattani province and stole 10 shotguns, said police Maj. Gen. Thanachareon Suwanno. Nobody was injured in the raid, he said.
The insurgents, who have previously been thought to be poorly organized and often armed only with machetes and homemade bombs, have launched a series of raids this year on military installations and other places where weapons are stored.
The government blames Islamic separatists for the violence while Muslim leaders cite discrimination and heavy-handed tactics by officials against the religious minority. Outside the south, most Thais are Buddhists.