| A former deputy village chief in southern Thailand was decapitated by local insurgents a few hours before Thai prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra toured the region on Sunday. The victim was found beheaded by knife on Sunday morning around 6:00 a.m. in the Saiburi district of the Pattani Province, which lies some 1,000 kilometers south of Bangkok and close to Malaysia to the south. Authorities were now carrying on related investigation and suspected the crime was from hands of insurgents responsible for the region’s violence in the past months, local police said. |