Indonesia has collected DNA samples from relatives of major terrorism suspects, police officials said March 26 at the opening of a new DNA laboratory developed jointly with the Australian Federal Police. Indonesian national police chief General Sutanto told reporters that Jakarta had asked for samples of DNA from the families of "Malaysian terrorists." Police spokesman Sisno Adiwinoto told reporters those included Noordin Top, a Malaysian national considered a mastermind of Islamic militant bombing attacks in Indonesia. Top was once considered a leader of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), blamed for the 2002 Bali blasts that killed 200 people, as well as other attacks including one aimed at Australia's embassy in Jakarta. Authorities say JI has now fractured into splinter factions. (Reuters, March 26)

Indonesian police shot dead a suspected Islamist militant believed to be linked to Abu Dujana, the purported current leader of the Jemaah Islamiah network, blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people. One militant was also injured after the suspects opened fire during the night raid near the city of Yogyakarta. (Reuters, March 21)

Suspected Islamist separatists shot and killed three Buddhist women involved with a project for victims of Thailand's insurgency March 19. The victims were headed to work at a farm project funded by Thailand's Queen Sirikit in the Nong Chik district of Pattani province, one of several in the area set up to help distressed women, including some widowed by the political violence. The project teaches the women to grow vegetables, fruit and other basic necessities. Assailants on a motorcycle drove up next to the truck the women were riding in and fired randomly. Thirteen other women escaped unharmed.

More than 500 Muslim villagers gathered at southern Thailand's Sabaiyoi town March 18 to demand justice after a midnight attack on an Islamic school left two young students dead and eight wounded. Students were asleep at the boarding school when assailants threw grenades and strafed the building with automatic rifle fire. Unidentified assailants also threw a grenade into a local mosque, injuring 11, on March 15, the same day suspected Islamist militants killed eight Buddhist civilians in an attack on a van. Local authorities blamed the schoool-house attack on Islamist militants, but this is disputed by local residents.

From AP, March 16:

NORTHAMPTON - Maha Ghosananda, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated monk who rebuilt Buddhism in Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, has died.

Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft of the US Joint Inter-Agency Task Force-West claimed evidence that secret laboratories for producing methamphetamine are operating in areas of the Phiilippines where Maoist and Islamic rebels have a strong presence, and that the guerillas are being funded by the trade. "That's one of our biggest concerns," Zukunft told Reuters during a break in meetings with Filipino counterparts at the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA). "It's much easier to stop them at the source than waiting for them to go into global distribution," said Zukunft, based at US Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii.

Eight Thai civilians—all Buddhists—were killed in the troubled south of Thailand when their van was shot upon by suspected Islamist guerrillas March 15. Thai security officials suspect that the attack was meant coincide with the founding of the National Revolutionary Front, a decades-old separatist group in the southern region of Patani.

Australia's military adventure in East Timor is starting to smell more like a small counterinsurgency war than a "peacekeeping" mission—if the world were paying any attention. From Catholic News, March 14:

Timor priest accuses Aussie troops
As fugitive Timorese rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado calls for mediation by the Church, an East Timor priest has accused Australian troops of terrifying local villagers after a raid by the soldiers left a number of houses in ruins.