Early on Thursday night, suspected Muslim militants set ablaze several rooms at Kuruchon Pattana School in Muang district. The fire entirely destroyed the area which is used by teachers during the day, said school principal Thitipan Thipprapai.

The school was immediately closed down and will reopen again on December 12, said Thitipan.

Schools and teachers have been the target of frequent violent attacks and more than 50 teachers have been killed over the past two years.

In Chanae district of Narathiwat, a rubber tapper Maseedee Wadeng, 25, was found dead in front of his house, his body riddled with longrange pistol bullets.

Police said Maseedee was on his way back from tapping rubber when two gunmen approached him from behind and shot him dead. Police added the suspected Muslim insurgents might have killed him because Maseedee went tapping rubber on Friday, which is banned by insurgents.

Separately, police found suspected items believed to be explosives on a roadside in Rangae and Chanae district, but both turned out to be hoaxes.

Meanwhile, victims of a violent attack on Wednesday were recuperating well, said doctors. The oneyearold Rattanapol and his parents are in the stable condition, said Director of Yala Hospital Dr Wattana Wattanayakorn. The three were wounded in a driveby shooting on Wednesday morning.

Two other school students, who were injured by a bomb blast in front of Wiangsuwan Witthayakom School, are also in a stable condition in hospital, said Wattana.

Inspector of Education Ministry Prasert Kaewpetch visited the two students yesterday and gave them Bt 10,000 each.

As of the end of November, 1,900 lives have been lost in the almost daily bombings, shootings and arson attacks which reemerged in the Muslimmajority south since January 2004.

The Nation

The Thai government should seek help from the longstanding separatist organisations to quell the ongoing violence in the deep South where more than 1,900 people have been killed since January 2004, Malaysia's staterun news agency, Bernama, quoted an unnamed separatist leader yesterday saying.

The separatist leader told Bernama the Thai government has wrongly assumed that the leaders of a number of long standing separatist movements, most of whom are living in exile, have no control over the hundreds of militants on the ground.

He said the exile leaders may not command large number of militants, however, these old guards could still "outsource", pointing to the thousands of unemployed youths willing to launch attacks in a guerrillastyle warfare.

"We are ready to talk, but the Government and the Army are ignoring us...they want to talk directly to the militants (armed wings and independent cells), but at the same time they are telling us they were unsure who to negotiate with," the leader was quoted by Bernama as saying.

He said a number of separatist leaders were suspicious that the Thai army was delaying negotiations with them so they can obtain more funding in the 2007 budget. The militarybacked government has allocated the armed forces Bt115 billion  up by nearly 50 per cent from last year's budget  partly due to ongoing violence in the restive region.

Thai intelligence officers said much of the violence in the Malayspeaking south is carried out by villagebased cells who operate almost independently from one another and with little contact with the long standing separatist groups. But it remained unclear as to what kind of influence these traditional groups could have on the militants on the ground.

But the separatist leader who spoke to Bernama said it was pointless for the Thai government to wait for the villagebased militants to come out from hiding to negotiate peace because, according to him, they were not the planners but merely implementing the strategies mapped out by several groups involved in the conflict.

Earlier this year, Thai senior government officials entered into several rounds of informal talks with leaders of these long standing organisations on the Malaysian island of Langkawi where they talked about the root cause of the problem.

The meetings were initiated by former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the Thai Honorary Consul in Langkawi, Shazryl Eskay Abdullah.

Separatist movements have agreed to drop their demands for independence in exchange for amnesty, better economic development, more funds and the use of Malay language in schools.

"The Government is implementing almost all our demands  but why keep the old leaders out?" Bernama quoted the leader as saying.

Asked about the measures taken by Surayud and Army Chief Gen Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the separatist leader said he believed the two men were sincere with their determination to solve the problem.

However, he said they have to go beyond making public statements to win the hearts and minds of the local Malay Muslims and added that whatever is promised must be fulfilled in writing.