Thai Police Kill 24 in Muslim South After Attacks.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai police shot dead at least 24 people on Wednesday, most of them youths, in a series of dawn gun-battles in what is a serious escalation of four months of violence in the restive Muslim south, officials said.

“They attacked five of our police booths in Yala province this morning and we killed 22 of them,” Colonel Prinya Kwanyuen, head of Yala province police, told Reuters by telephone. The largely Muslim province of Yala is 780 miles south of the capital Bangkok.

One soldier died in one of the Yala attacks, which were led by groups of at least 20 black-clothed men with guns, swords and machetes, he added.

In nearby Pattani province, rebels attacked at least three security outposts, killing one soldier, police said. Two people described as “bandits” by police were also shot dead. …

Bangkok has so far blamed the trouble on local gangsters exploiting disaffected local Malay-speaking Muslim youths who feel few emotional ties to the predominantly Buddhist country.

However independent analysts fear international militant groups, such as Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, might find fertile recruiting ground among the region’s impoverished Muslims.