Muslim victims of terrorism violence in southern Thailand

We investigated statistical models for describing the incidence rate of injuries to civilian resident victims of violence from terrorism in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces and four eastern districts of Songkhla province. For six years, there were 4,143 Muslim residents and 3,544 other (mainly Buddhist) residents of the target area have been recorded as victims by the Deep South Coordination Centre (DSCC). The overall incidence rates per 100,000 residents are 48 for Muslims and 121 for non-Muslims. We focused on the Muslim population and fitted negative binomial and log-normal models to incidence rates classified by gender, age group, region and year, with comparing relative risk by these factors, after adjusting for other factors to remove confounding. The models gave different results and showed that while specific regions were at higher risk at different times and these patterns could not be easily predicted, risks in different demographic groups remained relatively constant.