Pipe bombs found at power poles in Narathiwat rice field
Two home-made bombs discovered yesterday morning in a rice field in Narathiwat’s Bacho district were found to have damaged the bases of high-voltage power poles.
They were suspected to have been part of the coordinated but bloodless attacks in the deep South on Thursday night.
After the alarm was raised by local residents, police and bomb squad officers went to the paddy in Tambon Kayomati at 10am and collected fragments of two small pipe bombs planted 200 metres apart.
According to the Forward Command of the Internal Security Operations Command Region 4, bomb blasts and tyre burning incidents on Thursday night occurred in 19 districts across four southernmost provinces. The agency reported 31 coordinated attacks – 12 in Pattani, seven in Yala, nine in Narathiwat and three in Songkhla.
The blasts damaged 52 electricity poles, causing blackouts in many areas of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Songkhla provinces.
Yesterday, Provincial Electricity Authority officials and engineers from telephone and Internet companies were repairing blast damage to their services in Yala’s Betong district.
Power supplies and phone and Internet signals had been restored to 70 per cent of the affected areas yesterday, with the rest expected to be back to normal today.