Pananre (Thailand), Dec. 5 (Reuters): Around 50 Thai Air Force planes ?bombed? the largely Muslim south with 100 million paper birds today as a symbol of peace for the region where nearly 500 people have been killed since January.

Villagers stared into the sky awaiting the deluge of birds, one of which was signed by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and carried the promise of a scholarship or a job for the finder.

Children ran around in excitement in one village as a plane appeared several thousand feet overhead at the time promised, and although the unloading of the birds was invisible to the naked eye, the paper birds descended.

Unfortunately the wind blew them beyond the village, one of hundreds in the three southern provinces near the Malaysian border which were the target of one of the biggest operations in the history of the Thai Air Force.

?I?m really disappointed,? said 11-year-old Fatima Sulhong. ?All I saw was the plane flying over.?