29 October 2004	Friday	14 Ramazan 1425

NARATHIWAT, Oct 28: A bomb killed one person and injured more than 20 in mainly Muslim southern Thailand on Thursday as rage grew over the deaths of 85 protesters detained by the army.

Separatists in the south warned of revenge attacks for the Muslims' deaths on Monday, while Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra called a meeting with senior security advisers, saying he would address the public about the crisis on Friday after an investigation.

The bomb, in a plastic bag, was thrown into a bar in the town of Sungai Kolok in Narathiwait province and triggered by a mobile phone, said defence ministry spokesman Major-General Palangkoon Klaharn.

He said one person died in the attack. The hospital in Sungai Kolok said it treated about 22 people for wounds.

"I helped them carry injured people. Most of them were totally covered in blood," a witness, Bangchad Chokeamnuay, told Thailand's Channel 9 television.

An outlawed separatist group vowed revenge. "They will pay for what they have done, their cities will burn," said a statement posted on the website of the Pattani United Liberation Organization.

Six protesters were shot dead in a chaotic demonstration on Monday outside the Tak Bai police station in Narathiwat. Another 78 suffocated or were crushed to death after they were crammed into trucks for transport to an army base in the neighbouring Pattani province. Another victim died of injuries on Wednesday.

The deaths sparked condemnation at home and abroad.

Mr Thaksin has come under fire for the excessive force used by police and troops during and after Monday's protest but he testily fended off suggestions that he would resign over the crisis.

"Nonsense, someone released a rumour," he snapped when reporters asked if he would step down. "I still have a lot of work to do."

Muslim leaders said the south was extremely tense, with anger likely to boil over.

"People here are in deep mourning. Many are expressing their sorrow and anger and denounce the action by authorities," Narathiwat's Islamic committee chairman, Abdul Rahman Abdul Samed, told AFP.

A total of 416 people have now been killed in a separatist movement which flared up again early this year in the south of the mainly Buddhist kingdom.

The latest deaths sparked international outrage - particularly in majority Muslim nations, including Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Mr Thaksin stopped short of an apology and defended the action of his officers, blaming fasting and drug use among protesters for the high death toll.

Detainees, however, told a visiting senators' delegation that they had been beaten up by police and troops and stacked in trucks, where many fellow protesters suffocated or were crushed to death.

"They said they were beaten up before they were put on the trucks," Senator Kraisak Choonhavan told AFP after meeting dozens of the detainees.

Mr Kraisak laid the blame squarely on Prime Minister Thaksin. "He should be held responsible. He has to admit the truth because what he is saying is not the truth," he said.

A witness also said authorities badly mistreated the detainees, tying their hands behind them and laying them four-deep in the trucks.

"It was very rough," said the witness who asked not to be identified. "They were pushed around, and then stacked laying down in open trucks like chickens. The people on the bottom were completely buried."

A Thai forensics expert said most died from suffocation or heatstroke but she did not pinpoint the time of death.

The Asian Human Rights Commission led calls for an independent investigation into the death of the protesters. It said Thailand must be prepared to admit a role for international bodies "in uncover-ing the truth and finding a way forward".

In one of the bloodiest days in this year's violence in the south, 108 militants and five security forces were killed in a single day in April in a standoff at a mosque.

Later, the Pattani United Liberation Organization posted a message on the internet warning foreigners to stay away from key Thai tourist destinations.

On Wednesday, gunmen shot dead a Thai village official and wounded three other people in Narathiwat, while on Thursday police defused a bomb set to go off outside a school in the province.-AFP