Police officer killed in ‘retaliatory’ bomb blast
One police officer was killed and other was wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Bannang Sata district in Yala on Tuesday morning that the authorities believe was conducted in retaliation for the arrest on Monday of suspected insurgent Subree Jehwae.
Following an incident report at 8.45am, Bannang Sata Police officers, bomb squad members and rangers went to inspect the scene on Tabing Teengee-Sai Kaew road in Tambon Taling Chan.
The body of Pol Sgt-Major Thossaporn Sethsarn and the wounded Pol Lance Corporal Thiammek Thongchat had already been taken to Bannang Sata Hopsital when they arrived.
Officers found the Bannang Sata precinct’s pick-up truck at the scene with a blown-up motorcycle lying nearby. Fragments of a five-kilogram metal box bomb were scattered around the scene.
An initial probe found that Thossaporn and Thiammek were riding on the motorcycle leading eight other teacher-protection team members who were on the truck and another tailing motorcycle. The bomb, which was hidden behind a traffic sign, went off as they passed it.
Colonel Pramote Phrom-in, spokesman for the Internal Security Operations Command Region 4’s Front Command, said Fourth Army Region chief Lt-Gen Piyawat Narkvanich offered condolences to the slain officer’s family and had instructed army officers to work with police to find the culprits.
In a related development, a bomb went off in Narathiwat’s Sungai Padi district on Monday night, but nobody was injured.
Authorities said it was an attempt to kill soldiers who guard the site of ongoing road repairs each morning. However, it appeared that rain had triggered a short-circuit and the bomb went off prematurely, said Sungai Padi precinct superintendent Pol Colonel Pakdee Preechachon.
Pakdee led a group of officers who inspected the bomb scene at a road running parallel to the railway. They found a 50-centimetre-deep and 1-metre-wide crater caused by the explosion, which occurred at about 8.30pm.
Fragments suggest that a bomb had been placed in a cooking cylinder. The explosion also cracked a cement pillar on the barbed-wire fence of a nearby plantation.