Thai Muslims enraged and fearful as army hunts for more rebels

"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.

Relations between the neighbours have been strained since Thai officials said in March that militants behind renewed violence in the area had taken refuge in Malaysia.

In a move likely to be viewed with suspicion in Bangkok, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Malaysia’s prime minister, said his country was willing to offer refuge to fleeing Thais.

"It will not be refugee camps but some arrangements must be made," Mr Badawi was quoted as saying. "They will want a place of refuge until peace returns to their area."

Thailand’s interior minister, Bhokin Balakula, said the insurgents were "a combination of separatists, criminals and drug traffickers". But a senior general said the army, which quashed a low-key separatist insurgency in the region in the 1970s and 1980s, could face thousands more rebels.

Tourism could be hit, as the outlawed Pattani United Liberation Organisation warned visitors to avoid the three southernmost provinces and the resorts of Phuket and Krabi.