Four troops hurt in 20kg bomb blast

Source: bangkokpost

Grenades fired into outpost, no one injured 

NARATHIWAT : Four soldiers were injured yesterday in a bomb attack on a road in Narathiwat.

Security officers examine a one-metre deep hole left in a road in Narathiwat’s Cho Airong district after a bomb went off, hurting four army officers. WAEDAO HARAI

A bomb planted on a road between Ban Parehlubo and Ban Kue Rong in tambon Maruebo in Narathiwat's Cho Airong district went off about 10am as a pick-up truck carrying an army major and three other soldiers passed by.

The explosion caused their truck to swerve off the road and plunge into a ditch. The four officers sustained minor head injuries.

They are Maj Samatchai Plaengsai, deputy chief of the Narathiwat 31 special task force; Capt Adisorn Khamchuai; Sgt Sirichai Treesat and Sgt Theeraphong Buntam.

Cho Airong police said the bomb was a homemade explosive, assembled in a fire extinguisher and weighing about 20 kilogrammes.

The explosion left a hole in the road measuring about one metre deep and 1.8 metres wide. The detonator was discovered in a bush about 20 metres away. Cho Airong police chief Pol Col Suthon Sukwiset said that as his team was inspecting the bomb scene, another bomb went off on the roadside about 200 metres away.

The second bomb weighed about 5kg and was detonated by a mobile phone.

No one was injured.

Elsewhere in the same district, four M-79 grenades were fired into an outpost of the 31-6 peace development unit next to Ban Cho Ko mosque yesterday morning.

No casualties were reported.

Capt Nalucha Buntam, a company chief in the Narathiwat 31 special task force, and three subordinates travelled in a pick-up truck to inspect the scene.

A roadside bomb, detonated by mobile phone, went off, but no one was hurt.

The bomb damaged the truck's body and a side window.

In another development, rail services in Narathiwat are set to resume today following the completion of repairs to bomb-damaged sections of track.

Trains have been suspended since Wednesday when four bombs went off on a section of track in Rangae district. A railway worker lost his leg when he stepped on a mine as he took a break from repairs to the track, damaged in earlier blasts.

Manop Muanpreecha, chief at Tanyongmas station in Rangae district, said railway staff entered the bombed areas yesterday to repair sections of track damaged by the blasts.

Repairs finished last night and services are set to resume today after earlier being suspended.

Several intending passengers turned up at Tanyongmas station yesterday to ask State Railway of Thailand officials when services will resume.

Internal Security Operations Command Region 4 deputy director Maj Gen Akara Tiproj said the blast was probably the work of a drugs trafficking ring. Earlier, railway security personnel seized 60,000 methamphetamine pills and arrested two suspects in Hua Hin, one of them from Rangae.

The drug seizure and the bomb blasts could be linked, police say.