A man prays at the Krue Se mosque on Friday, the scene of a shootout earlier this week. (Reuters)

Pattani (Thailand), April 30 (Reuters): Saddened and angry, Muslims attended Friday prayers across restive southern Thailand as troops stepped up the hunt for what officials said could be thousands of Islamic separatists.

Thailand is reeling from Wednesday’s unprecedented violence in its three southern, Muslim-majority provinces, where troops and police shot dead 108 gun- and machete-wielding Islamic militants after coming under attack in a series of dawn raids.

“The people are upset and angry,” said Yosoff Samail, 60, head cleric at the central mosque in the provincial town of Pattani, where troops with rocket-propelled grenades and teargas 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 asked after prayers attended by more than 1,000 faithful, many spilling onto the streets.

Across the border in Muslim-majority Malaysia, where sympathy is strong for Malay-speaking Thai Muslims, Opposition politicians branded the shootout the “massacre of Pattani”.

“This is an oppression, a massacre against Muslims,” said Sallehuddin Ayob, youth chief of the Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS), adding that no one had proved the dead were terrorists.

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 seen with suspicion in Bangkok, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said his country was willing to offer refuge to Thais fleeing the trouble. “It will not be refugee camps but some arrangements must be made,” the official Bernama news agency quoted him as saying.

In Geneva, acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan called on Thai authorities to carry out “swift and transparent investigations”.

The death toll from the carnage rose yesterday when one of the militants died of his injuries, army officials said.