Flurry of Rebel Attacks Kills Two in Thailand’s Deep South

Nasueroh
2016.03.31
Pattani
160331-TH-violence-620.jpg Thai bomb-squad personnel inspect a roadside for explosives in Yaring district, Pattani province, March 31, 2016.
Nasueroh/BenarNews

Two civilians were killed and 12 other people were injured in several bomb attacks and a shooting carried out by suspected rebels in Thailand’s Deep South  on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, Thai police and military officials said.

All of the attacks took place in Pattani, one of the provinces in the insurgency-wracked southern border region, with at least eight bombs going off in multiple attacks, officials said.

The attacks brought to at least 27 the number of people killed in the Deep South since Thai security forces raided a rebel hideout in Pattani on Feb. 10.

The latest attacks followed attacks over the weekend that killed five people, including two civilians. Since 2004, at least 6,000 people have been killed in violence associated with the separatist insurgency in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim Deep South.

On Wednesday night, an official at Prado, a tambon or cluster of villages in Pattani’s Yarang district, was shot and killed by two  unidentified men in a drive-by attack, police said.

The victim, 40-year-old Teerapong Pattanabutr, was riding home on his motorbike when he was gunned down.

Before midnight, six bomb explosions occurred around Yarang, another tambon in Yarang district. One of the blasts injured five policemen who were setting up a checkpoint near a local post office, officials said.

The five wounded officers were taken to a local hospital where they were treated for non-critical injuries.

At 6 a.m. on Thursday, a bomb exploded at a house in Bangpu, a village in Yarang district, killing one person, identified as Nit Rodpetch, and injuring another civilian.

Nit died at the scene and one of the other victims,  Waemaheng Kuanekwin, 71, was rushed to a hospital in the district.

“He regained consciousness and is in stable and safe condition,” his son Mayase told BenarNews.

At around 9:30 a.m., another explosion occurred as a police bomb-squad and forensics team inspected the scene of one of the bomb attacks. Six officers were hurt, but their injuries were not life-threatening, according to officials.

Col. Yuthanam Petmuang, a deputy spokesman for the regional headquarters of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC 4), said insurgents had carried out the attacks using pipe-bombs.

“The bombs used were small ones – not powerful – and they were planted in a hurry. The attacks were just done by insurgents who wanted to have public recognition that they still exist,” Yuthanam told reporters.

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