Assault rifles for Thai villages

BANGKOK: Thai authorities have distributed hundreds of assault rifles to village volunteers in the insurgency-battered south, in a move seemingly at odds with a pledge to find peace to a decade-long conflict within a year.

Violence in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south has left thousands dead – the majority civilians – since 2004 across the southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, which were annexed more than a century ago by Thailand.