The killers arrived under the cover of darkness, creeping up to the shabby bamboo huts where the schoolboys lay resting. Earlier that evening, the boys had accompanied the principal of their Islamic boarding school to a funeral. By 9.30pm, they were home and packed off to bed.
When the gunmen had finished firing, 10 teenage schoolboys lay injured or dying, and the calm of a Saturday night in this village had been shattered. A call went out from the school mosque for drivers to take victims to the hospital. Two were confirmed dead, the youngest aged 12, and rumours swept the stricken Muslim community that Thai security forces were to blame. Stories spread of army rangers in fatigues glimpsed between the rubber trees in the fields that surrounded the school.
The next morning, soldiers sent to the school in southern Thailand's troubled Songkhla provice to investigate the shooting found the road blocked by tree trunks and about 500 people. It was off-limits to outsiders, declared the protesters. Other routes into the school were also blocked. Tensions rose and shots were fired into the air. At one point, participants said, a soldier pulled the pin from a grenade.
Still, they refused to budge. Across the barricades, staring defiantly at the troops were scores of Muslim women, their heads veiled in black scarves. A shaky mobile phone video shows the women standing their ground as soldiers yell and fire warning shots into the air. Boys are seen milling by the road in the brief clip. 'We're not afraid of soldiers and guns. Not at all,' one elderly female participant said.
Female protestors facing off against security forces is becoming a common sight in Thailand's violence-plagued south, where more than 2,100 people have died since a separatist insurgency began in 2004.
In recent months, as the death toll rises, authorities have faced a surge of protests by women and children that are testing Thailand's commitment to finding a peaceful solution to the spiralling conflict.