4 soldiers die in southern orchard

At 11am, suspected insurgents attacked the Narathiwat 30th special task force unit’s sixstrong team in a fruit orchard opposite Lamor Nok School in Reu So district, before fleeing with the soldiers’ weapons. A stray bullet from the 30-minute gunfight injured sevenyearold schoolboy Alamin Pokira in the stomach while he was standing in front of his classroom.

Police investigators found the bullet-ridden bodies of Sergeant Nithi Aree, Sergeant Supachai Kaewnunuan, Private Nujarin Surakan and Private Napasin Chusri, and collected some 100 spent bullet casings. The seriously injured Private Kraiwit Suk-on, 22, was taken to Reu So Hospital.
Private Wittaya Naratcho said 18 armed insurgents, dressed like military rangers and in two groups, approached his team on foot and fired a hail of bullets at them. Wittaya managed to escape into the woods but his fellow soldiers were shot dead.
The attack terrorised the school’s 13 teachers and 222 students, prompting the school to temporarily close yesterday. School director Chaiwat Sumethawiwat said the school had previously witnessed three violent incidents – two arsons and the murder of a teacher in 2006. In Pattani’s Mueang district, the suspected insurgents’ attack that smashed 29 security cameras along the Pattani-Narathiwat Road was the third in a month.
In more violence, Khapong Ngokngam, 45, a resident of Ban Tha Dan in Nong Chik district, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle while he was shopping at Ban Pakajinor Market.
Authorities in Songkhla’s Hat Yai district were looking for vehicles with fake licence plates after warnings of insurgent bomb attacks in Hat Yai during the Vegetarian Festival that lasts until Monday. A security agency reported that the insurgents aimed to attack four southern economic communities – Sungai Kolok, Yala’s Betong andMueang districts and Hat Yai.
In response to Her Majesty the Queen’s instruction to assist teachers affected by the unrest, a foundation-laying ceremony was held yesterday for a new southern teacher centre in Tambon Budi in Yala’s Mueang district. The centre, built on a 50-rai plot of land by a royally granted fund and combined with the government’s Bt160 million budget will function as a security shelter with houses for local teachers.