Fatal attack was revenge,say police

Security officials inspect a wrecked Army pickup after a powerful roadside bomb killed three police officers yesterday in Pattani’s Nong Chik district./Charoon Thongnual/The Nation

The attacker targeted the second of a twovehicle convoy of officers that was speeding through tambon Takamcha, police said.

Also in Pattani, a 40yearold Muslim deputy village chief was gunned down in a driveby attack late Wednesday, shortly after two other men, aged 29 and 45, were shot dead in front of a school nearby.

The roadside bomb, estimated to have been about 15 kilograms in weight, totally destroyed the military pickup truck and left a threemetre wide and onemetre deep crater in the road.

The victims were identified as the deputy superintendent of Nong Chik police station, LtColonel Yuthakarn Pleanphoe, 51, SgtMajor Wasapol Khammee, 51, and Private Winai Maeman, 35.

Private Achanai Binlateh, 24, survived the attack but remained in critical condition. They were part of security details for local schools in Pattani's Yaring district.

The bomb was set off by a remote control via mobile phone by suspected insurgents who were hiding in the bush on the side of the road, police said.

 "This was a retaliation against the progress that the authorities have made in winning the local population over against the insurgents," said Pol MajGeneral Kreerin Intrakoew, commander of Pattani Provincial Police.

Claim of progress are often repeated by security officials in the restive region in spite of the fact that violence is a everyday occurrence in the Muslimmajority region.

Deep South Watch, a Prince of Songkhla Univeristybased independent research group that monitors the conflict, has put the southern death toll since January 2004 at 3,287 lives, of whom 1,788 were Malay Muslims and 1,348 Buddhists, with another 5,405 people wounded.

Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who used to inhabit the region, some 70,000 have left since 2004, DSW said.

 Authorities blamed Muslim separatists bent on carving out a separate homeland for the Malays in the border provinces.

 Government policy has been to win over the local community, many of whom share a historical mistrust of the Thai state and security forces.