Grenade attack on soldiers in Yala's Old Market

Authorities said two men riding pillion on a motorbike tossed a fragmentation grenade at a moving military vehicle. But the grenade failed to go off upon impact and bounced back on the road where it explode, injuring the six local residents.

The attack took place at about 19:30 hrs, which is one of the business time of the day when local residents stroll up and down the street's food stalls, restaurants and teashops in this neighbourhood where insurgent attacks are rare.

A senior government officials said authorities have been on high alert for fear of retaliation following the Monday assassination of Ustaz Mae, a prominent Muslim cleric in Yala's Banang Sata district believed to have been killed by government death squad.

Moreover on May 30, there was also the questionable death of a suspected militant, Sulaiman Naesa, who died in his detention cell eight days after he was taken to the Fourth Army Forward Command in Pattani where he was being questioned about insurgency activities in the region.

Yala is one of the three southernmost provinces that has come under a spate of attack since this wave of violence broke out in late 2001 but picked up the pace in 2004. More than 4,000 people have died since January 2004 in insurgency related incidents.

Most of the victims are ethnic Malays. Police blamed a shadowy militant network of separatists bent on carving out a separate homeland for the Malays in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.