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At least 23 monks have been killed and more than 20 wounded since 2004, but there has not been an attack on monks since 2015. An imam was shot on Jan. 11, also in Narathiwat province.
The killings have added a religious dimension to a conflict that initially was rooted in ethnic and national tensions.
“Many Buddhists, not just in the south but across the country, are feeling aggrieved by Muslims, and it will take time for that to change,” Rakchart Suwan, chairman of the Buddhist Network for Peace, told Reuters.
STUDENTS screamed in fear on Friday morning as they heard guns being fired near their school in Narathiwat province.
A gunfight erupted after rangers and police confronted a group of suspected insurgents in a rubber plantation nearby. One suspect was killed in the clash, and authorities believe other suspects were wounded.
The firing happened a couple of kilometres from the Ban Teukor School in Chanae district, but the sounds of a hovering helicopter and guns firing had the students so terrified, they had to be ushered into the school library.
Police officers and rangers had surrounded the rubber plantation after learning that some five suspected insurgents had set up camp there. However, as they got closer, one of the suspects became aware of them and alerted others.
The initial $7.3 billion price tag on the Kyauk Pyu deepwater port, on the western tip of Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine state, set off alarm bells due to reports of troubled Chinese-backed projects in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, the official and the advisor said. Deputy Finance Minister Set Aung, who was appointed to lead project negotiations in May, told Reuters the “project size has been tremendously scaled down”. The revised cost would be “around $1.3 billion, something that’s much more plausible for Myanmar’s use”, said Sean Turnell, economic advisor to Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Kyauk Pyu is an entry point for a 770-kilometre (480-mile) pipeline delivering oil and natural gas to China’s Yunnan province. That gives China an alternative route for energy imports from the Middle East that avoids the strategic chokepoint of the Malacca Strait.