Southern insurgents threw a pipe bomb at a road checkpoint in Muang district of Yala province Thursday night, causing damage to three cars.
None of the officers or defence volunteers at the checkpoint, on the out-bound lane, were injured. A car belonging to a police officer and two others, owned by villagers, sustained shrapnel damage.
Reinforcements, led by Pol Maj-Gen Seksant Churangsarith, the provincial police superintendent, rushed to the scene to support the officers and to prevent further attacks, while an explosives ordnance disposal (EOD) team searched for more IEDs and collected bomb fragments for forensic analysis.
Bomb attacks by n insurgents in the three restive southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat have escalated in recent weeks, which analysts speculate is related to the 20th anniversary of the Tak Bai massacre on October 25, 2004.
October 25 this year also marks the expiry of the statute of limitations in the Tak Bai case, and all the suspects, among them Gen Pisan Wattanawongkiri, former commander of the Fourth Army Region, will not face justice if they are not brought before the Narathiwat court to stand trial by the 25ใ
