Officers search garage thought to supply insurgents
A combined team of 50 security personnel yesterday searched a garage in Narathiwat's Tak Bai district where they suspected vehicles were being modified for use by southern insurgents to carry out attacks.
Besides 14 cars inside the garage, the team found another 14 in an abandoned rice mill 100 metres away, some of them with fake licence plates. They also found some Malaysian licence plates hidden in a large pipe. Police said they would summon garage owner Sunthorn Phrompakdi, 49, who was not there at the time.
The search stemmed from Friday’s arrest of Masata Jehma, 45, along with a pick-up truck with a fake licence plate. Masata told police Sunthorn hired him to drive the truck to a gas station in Muang district, where someone would pick it up later. Police were probing whether the truck might be used by insurgents as a car bomb during the Narathiwat Red Cross fair from May 5-14.
Meanwhile, a member of the Ban Kumang mosque committee, Supian Bensueni, 46, was shot dead in Yala’s Bannang Sata district yesterday while riding a motorcycle in his village by a gunman with an M16 assault rifle.
In related news, police at 9am yesterday inspected the scene where some 20 suspected insurgents at around 2am stole 25 security cameras, which had been installed by the Southern Border Provinces Administration Centre (SBPAC) on power poles along Road 410 (Pattani-Yala) in Pattani’s Yarang district.
