Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's new emergency powers threaten to spark an even deeper crisis in Thailand's southern Muslim provinces, the head of a peacemaking commission said Tuesday, a day when at least five more people were killed.

The new powers, which the government adopted Sunday after a rise in the violence, meant little if authorities did not arrest those responsible, said respected former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, who heads a commission set up to restore peace to the south.

Along with detention without trial, Thaksin's government has powers to censor news and tap phones.

Anand said he is also worried that the authorities may be heavy-handed in implementing the measures, intended to end an insurgency that has claimed at least 900 lives since it broke out in January 2004.

``The most crucial thing is that authorities must arrest the real killers - not the scapegoats - and bring them to justice,'' Anand said. ``In 85 percent of murder cases, the government does not know who the perpetrators were, which shows the government has failed to find the real wrongdoers,''

Anand, who talked after his National Reconciliation Commission met through the night Monday, said he is concerned about the implementation of the emergency decree by local officials.

``I am not certain that the new measures will end the unrest,'' Anand said, adding that people fear that the emergency decree itself ``is leading to a real crisis.''

The government has invoked tough emergency measures across virtually the whole of its mainly Muslim south in a tough move to quell the violence, after hastily approving a decree Friday that greatly expanded Thaksin's powers.

The government has blamed Islamic separatists for much of the violence. But others, including Anand, have said the unrest is a deadly mix of separatists, black marketeers, narco-traffickers and corrupt officials. In the latest violence, five more people were killed, including a rubber farmer in Yala province, the first Muslim to be beheaded in the insurgency.

But it was the 10th decapitation since early June.

Thai officials have blamed Islamic separatists for the beheadings of Buddhists, saying they are mimicking terrorists in Iraq.

Schools and teachers have often been targets in the violence as they are seen by militants as symbols of Bangkok's attempts to impose Thai culture on a region where most residents are ethnic Malay.

At least 26 teachers have been killed in the unrest. Armed soldiers escort teachers to and from class and police stand guard on roadsides.AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE