TAO torched in Narathiwat; officer killed in Yala
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Heavily armed men carrying containers of benzene burned a Tambon Administrative Organisation office in Narathiwat's Bacho district to the ground after demanding to know whether there were any Buddhists present.
Thirteen staff members of the Bacho TAO were about to leave for lunch when seven armed men stormed the office, said TAO clerk Abdulwaha Dullayapinit.
One of them fired into the air before asking in the Yawi dialect whether there was a Thai Buddhist working there.
Abdulwaha told them there were no Buddhists at the office, but the men accused him of lying. The clerk then said the only Thai Buddhist employee, Suchanart Lee, was on leave. The men then used the benzene to douse a room used to store documents and torched it before speeding away.
Staff members fled the building, alerting fire-fighters and asking local villagers to help put out the blaze. However, fuelled by the paper documents, the fire razed the building to the ground.
Abdulwaha told police that the suspects seemed to target Suchanart, the only Thai Buddhist working at the office. He speculated that the men had brought the benzene to torch Suchanart.
Meanwhile, Pol Sergeant Washira Saengsri, 32, was shot and killed while manning a road checkpoint in Yala’s Krong Pinang district.
Washira succumbed to gunshot wounds to the neck at a nearby hospital. An initial police investigation found that the victim and other combined-forces officers were at the checkpoint on Highway 410 from Yala to Bannang Sata when the sound of gunfire was heard and Washira, who was sitting on a motorcycle, fell to the ground.
He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Police said insurgents may have been hiding in a house in the area and used a rifle equipped with a telescopic sight to shoot the victim at long range.
