The death toll in battles between Muslims and Thai authorities has now risen to more than 100.

PATTANI, Thailand (Reuters) - Troops and police killed more than 100 gun and machete-wielding Muslim militants Wednesday, including more than 30 in a three-hour mosque shoot-out, on a day of carnage in Thailand’s restive south.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said 107 “bandits” and five soldiers had died in the fighting, which started when gangs of mainly young men — some wearing Islamic slogans — launched dawn attacks on army and police posts across the predominantly Muslim region.

Army chief General Chaiyasidh Shinawatra said intelligence services had been tipped off about the attacks, meaning security forces were ready and waiting for trouble.

“Our intelligence operations have been beefed up a lot with the help of local people, some of whom have supplied us with tips and information,” he told a news conference.

Many of those involved in the assaults, which mark a major escalation in four months of violence in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces, were wearing black or dark green uniforms with bright red headbands.

Thai officials are trying to bury their heads in the sand and pretend this has nothing to do with Islam:

“Judging from their dead bodies, they had taken narcotics. Their smell suggested the use of drug-laced cough drops,” Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh told reporters.

Thaksin vowed to smash what he said were rings of troublemakers motivated purely by crime, rather than by religion or ideology, in a region that saw a low-key Muslim separatist rebellion in the 1970s and 1980s.

But it’s going to be difficult to ignore the RoP’s role, with scenes like this:

After a three-hour gun battle at a well-known mosque near the provincial town of Pattani, soldiers were dragging bodies from the bullet-riddled building for fear they might be rigged to booby traps, witnesses said. Teargas still hung in the air.

“We had no choice but to take decisive action and storm the place to wrap up our operations as quickly as possible,” said army head Chaiyasidh.

Two more battalions of troops had been sent to an area already crawling with military personnel, army officials said.

Elsewhere in the forested, hilly region, television showed a sandbagged police post ablaze after one of the attacks. Burning motorcycles were scattered in and around the compound and the corpses of two rebels lay in the entrance hallway.

One wore a Muslim prayer cap, and both had red scarves tied around their heads and waists.

One also wore a green T-shirt emblazoned with Arabic writing and the letters “JI” — a possible reference to Jemaah Islamiah, the group linked to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network and blamed for terror attacks across Southeast Asia.

This AFP story on the carnage quotes an Islamic leader who, predictably, reverses the blame for the incident: Separatist clashes in Thailand’s Muslim south leave 112 dead.

Islamic leaders said they feared Wednesday’s unprecedented violence would spark a major deterioration in the south where resentment of central authority already runs high.

“The incident will definitely affect Muslim people’s feelings. They will have bad feelings towards authorities and the turmoil will continue,” said Abdul Rosue Aree, deputy chairman of the Islamic Council in Narathiwat.

“I am really concerned that the problems in the south will escalate even further.”