Three shot dead, three hurt by home-made bombs

The bombs yesterday followed the fatal shooting of three people at a petrol station in the same province on Sunday. 

The first incident took place at 7am yesterday when a civilian defence volunteer was inspecting trees felled to block a road in Waeng district. He stepped on one of the home-made bombs and lost his right leg. Police said the bomb was a plastic water pipe filled with 1kg of explosive.

A banner tied to tree branches at the scene had a message in Thai, which said: “October of Tak Bai: As long as those who killed Malays are in power, Thai Buddhists pay for it with their lives.”

Later, at a rubber plantation in Sri Sakhon district, a 16-year-old and a 10-year-old were wounded after the elder boy stepped on a similar device and lost his left ankle. The younger boy was hit with shrapnel in the torso and both legs, sustaining minor injuries. Police found debris similar to the first bomb.

At about 10am, a roadside bomb was detonated on a road in Bah Choh district near a squad of soldiers on foot patrol, but they suffered no injuries.

And in Yala, a bomb squad defused another home-made device planted at a bus shelter in Raman district.

Narathiwat police said insurgents who planted bomb attacks at several locations in five districts had disguised themselves as women by wearing head-to-toe burkas before planting the explosives in target areas.

Police in Yala said they had found a crucial piece of evidence in a series of bomb attacks on October 25 which killed three and wounded 60 people – a SIM card in the mobile phone of an insurgent also killed by the blast linking him with fellow insurgents in Bannang Sata and Yarang districts in Pattani.

Meanwhile, unknown gunmen shot dead three Buddhists at a petrol station in Narathiwat on Sunday, police said. Victims included a 75-year-old man shot in the head while refuelling his motorcycle and a woman gunned down in front of a grocery store at the station. No arrests were made.