Just a week ago, the 19 youthful members of Baan Su So's football team were the pride of their lush, seemingly tranquil southern Thai village, winning a top prize in a league championship.
But today, villagers in Baan Su So are reluctant to talk about the religious Muslim athletes, who were killed on Wednesday in a hail of police gunfire after they attacked a Thai security checkpoint 26km from home.
The teammates, who ranged in age from 19 to 32, now lie in a shared grave, buried as martyrs by the common agreement of their stunned families.
"They fought together, they died together, and they helped each other," says Manasada Jaemasong, 22, whose brother-in-law, Deret Duramae, 32, was among those who died after charging the police post.
Before his death, Mr Deret, told his family he was going on a religious pilgrimage.
"I cannot guess what was in his mind," Ms Manasada says, "but a person who died like this must believe in religion very seriously, and have a strong will to do something for God."
As violence has rippled across Buddhist Thailand's Muslim south over the past four months, Thaksin Shinawatra, the business-minded prime minister, has dismissed urgent warnings from security forces about a resurgence of the separatist militancy that roiled the region in the 1970s and 1980s.
Instead, the premier blamed criminal gangs for a January 4 raid on an army camp; the subsequent sporadic slayings of about 117 government officials, police, soldiers, Buddhist monks and civilians; and arson attacks on public buildings.
But the actions of the Su So footballers, Islamic religious teachers and scores of other devout young Thai Muslims who mounted co-ordinated, suicidal attacks against police posts last week reflect the region's smouldering fury, now coalescing around a secretive network with barely articulated aims.
The men's apparent willingness to make futile charges against the well- defended security outposts leaves little doubt that Thailand's Malay-speaking Muslim minority has been touched by the radical Islamism that has gained supporters across the Muslim world.
"We always worried this would happen, but we didn't know when," says Ahmad Somboon Bualuang, an academic who has spent years working in the region's rural villages.
"We hear about Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, and that may be influencing young people to say, 'We must fight for justice'."
Muslim intellectuals are now admitting that some Islamic schools harbour religious teachers who - inspired by their own studies in the Middle East and developments in the Islamic world - may be preaching radical interpretations of Islamic law, sanctifying violence against Thai authorities.
Ethnic Malay Muslims' long-standing resentment about their cultural and social alienation, lack of local job opportunities and increasing religious piety offer fertile grounds for radical notions to take hold.
"We have always been looked at as foreigners and alien in this country because we have different culture and traditions," said Mr Ahmad. "There is discrimination in every sector."
Bangkok has had troubled relations with its Malay Muslim minority since the then Siam annexed the former sultanate of Pattani in 1909. Initial Thai efforts to forcibly assimilate Muslims by banning Islamic law and eliminating prominent leaders were deeply resented. In the 1960s Muslims guerrillas launched a struggle for independence, which fizzled in the late 1980s.
Since then, Malay-speaking Muslims seemed to have come to terms with the Thai state, especially as democracy took root.
But beneath a veneer of tranquility, security forces claim hundreds, if not thousands, of young men imbued with Islamic separatist ideals have undergone training, some possibly in Indonesia, to prepare for battle.
In this environment, Mr Thaksin's overbearing "show them who's boss" style of governance, his clumsy security crackdown against Muslim schools, and green light for police to use lethal force against suspected troublemakers, has heightened tensions.
Rising police abuses, including the abduction and likely murder of the human rights lawyer Somchai Neelpapaichit, the Muslim community's legal champion, have also undermined moderates' claims that Thai Muslims can defend themselves within the legal system.
For all this, many Muslim intellectuals believe last week's unprecedented convulsion was plotted at the top not by committed separatists but by powerful individuals - possibly drug traffickers or political godfathers - with their own vendettas against Mr Thaksin.