She expressed thanks to her colleague and family for their supports.

Speaking to The Nation from her hospital bedside, Sirinart said she would not go back to teaching at the elementary school where her colleague, Juling Panganmoon, 24, was beaten until she passed out.

Juling is under going intensive care and the head physician at the Hat Yai Regional Hospital said it would it would take "a miracle" for her to recover the head injuries she suffered from the beating.

Sirinart said the incident erupted during the lunch break when about 50 people, mostly women, gathered near the school entrance but she didn't think much of it. Her fellow teacher said the villagers were angry over the arrest of two men, who authorities said were linked to the shooting death of a marine two months ago, and that they were going to take teachers hostage in return for their release.

The Thai Muslim teacher sense there would be a problem and asked Sirinart to put on a traditional Muslim headscarf as the crowd rushed to the foodshop where they were eating.

"One woman rushed over and snatched the scarf from my head and tried to take me away. My colleague tried to stop them but one of them pushed her to the ground," Sirinart recalled.

Sirinart said some of the women were slapping her as she was forced to go to a room on the school's second floor. When she arrived, Juling was already in the room.

Not long afterwards, while the men were attending the Friday weekly prayer at the mosque, the men dragged the two teachers to the village's child development center where they were locked up in a small dark room. The centre was about 400 metres away from the school.

Fellow teachers tried to comfort them through the back window but were chased away by the abductors, according to Sirinart.

While in the dark room, Sirinart said they tried to comfort each others, hoping this episode would end quickly.

But soon afterwards, said Sirinart, "a group of about ten men entered the room and began to beat us with their hands and sticks. We have never seen them before."

"We tried to crawl under the bed but they pulled us out. Julin started fighting back but that caused the men to beat her even more. She eventually passed out," Sirinart recalled.

Sirinart said plead the men to stop beating them and even suggested that they would be willing to help negotiate for their release. But that didn't work.

"When they left the room, I held Julin's hand and tried to see if she was conscience. But she had already passed out," she said.

Not long after the men left, the village chief and his deputies, and the village defense volunteer, entered the room and helped us up and took us to the hospital.

Amornrat Khemkhao

The Nation