Muslims in southern Thailand are seething over the Thai army’s harsh response to the violence of their Islamic brethren: Thai Muslims enraged and fearful as army hunts for more rebels.

THAI troops stepped up the hunt for thousands of Islamic militants as fear and anger spread across the south of the country in the wake of the killing on Wednesday of 108 insurgents wielding guns and machetes.

“The people are upset and angry,” said Yosoff Samail, 60, the head cleric at the central mosque in the town of Pattani, where troops with rocket-propelled grenades and tear gas stormed another mosque and killed more than 30 insurgents inside.

“They want to know why the army killed those in the mosque. Why did they use heavy weapons? Why didn’t they ask the chief Islamic leader what to do?” he said after Friday prayers attended by more than 1,000 worshippers, many spilling onto the streets.

Across the border in Malaysia, which has a Muslim majority and where sympathy is strong for Malay-speaking Thai Muslims, opposition politicians branded the mosque shoot-out the “massacre of Pattani”.

“This is an oppression, a massacre against Muslims,” said Sallehuddin Ayob of the Parti Islam se-Malaysia.