Despite an expression of regret to parliament, Thaksin was defiant in the face of criticism of his attitude to human rights. In Monday's tragedy, 78 protesters suffocated as they were crammed into overcrowded trucks and taken to military custody.

"It was an accident during transport which happened because the time and situation was pressing. There were few vehicles available, that was why they were crammed together which made it a bit rough," Thaksin told reporters.

The army had less access to transport than usual because Monday was a public holiday, he said.

He also suggested some of the victims, who were among 1,300 people arrested after a violent demonstration in the southern province of Narathiwat, died because they were already weakened by fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Amid fears of a violent backlash in the restive, mainly Muslim region, around 300 sobbing relatives pored over lists of victims outside the military barracks in Pattani, a provincial capital 700 miles south of Bangkok.

"I came to pick up my dead nephew. I am sad for what has happened. I never thought this would happen," said a 58-year-old Narathiwat village chief.

Soldiers used loudspeakers to calm the crowd, telling them the 1,200 plus detainees still in the camp were "alive and being treated well."

More than 440 people have now been killed in 10 months of violence that looks increasingly like a Muslim separatist insurgency in Thailand's three southernmost provinces.

Thaksin, who has adopted a hardline stance to the southern unrest, said security forces used "gentle measures" to quell the protest outside a police station which ended when troops and police fired live ammunition, tear gas and water cannon.

Six men were killed at the scene of the protest, called to demand the release of six Muslim villagers accused of giving government-issue shotguns to militants. Another man died in hospital on Tuesday night, bringing the total death toll to 85.

It was the worst violence in the mainly Muslim tip of the otherwise Buddhist kingdom since April 28, when troops and police shot dead 106 machete-wielding Muslim militants.

STOCK MARKET FALL

The Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO), a separatist group dormant since the 1980s, said insurgents would take their fight to Bangkok. The heightened security fears led to a 3.4 percent fall on Thailand's stock market.

"Their capital will be burned down in the same way the Pattani capital has been burned," PULO said in a fresh Internet statement. "Their blood will be shed on the soil and flow into water. Our weapon is fire and oil, fire and oil, fire and oil."

The group, which is not thought to have an active militant arm [of Islam], was involved in a violent campaign in the 1970s and 1980s for an independent Muslim kingdom of Pattani between southern Thailand and northern Malaysia.

Besides foreign investors, who dealers said were behind the stock market sell-off, Thailand's neighbors are also worried.

"This latest issue will create more instability and dissatisfaction and we are very worried that people will rise against the government," said Mohamad Hatta, a top official in the main Islamic party in neighboring Malaysia.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, said it was saddened by the deaths and worried about rising tension.

"Indonesia is confident that the government of Thailand would conduct appropriate inquiries to shed light about the tragic accident," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Dan 11:32 Such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries.

The Koran of Islam is a violent book. The fruit of it - is proof - worldwide! Mankind refuses to accept such a clear Truth - that the Koran violates even their own 'humanitarian' laws.

"MASSACRE"

Thai Muslim leaders said the incident, already being labeled a "massacre," would inflame the unrest, and could transform the relatively impoverished region into a fertile recruiting ground for the likes of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.  The Koran created al Qaeda.

"The situation down here will definitely turn much bloodier. Those militants who were responsible for trouble in the area will fight back harshly with suicide attacks," Nideh Waba, chairman of a religious schools association, told the Bangkok Post newspaper.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (ARHC) called for an independent inquiry into the protest and its aftermath. None of the self-professing 'human rights' groups are willing to condemn these following commands from the Koran - that the 'militants' are willing to die for:

Suggesting police in the south have been given freedom to act outside the law, the ARHC said the deaths were a direct consequence of the "intentional and dramatic weakening of controls over the police and armed forces" in the past two years.

The Nation newspaper blamed Thaksin's "contempt for human rights," saying he had adopted an iron-fisted approach to the south, which is home to most of Thailand's six million Muslims.

"Now this flawed trait of his leadership is threatening to plunge the country into the bitterest and most detrimental divide between people and state," it said. - of which the Koran is guilty: