A hidden bomb killed a female villager who detonated it when she stepped on a trip wire as she was heading to a plantation to tap her rubber and two ordinance offiers distached to the scene nearly met the same fate when they arrived at the scene, a local official said.
The size of the two bombs were not clear but the two officers could lose their legs from the attack believed to have been carriedout by a local separatist cell, the officer said.
The incident took place Friday morning in the village of Kirikate village in Yala's Than To district.
It came one day after a security unit killed a suspected insurgents and arrested another after a tense standoff in Pattani's Mayo district.
The dead suspect, Sabuding Deng, was said to have been negotiating his surrender with the authorities days before he was surrounded and killed, said a local resident who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mayo is one of the highly contested district in the southernmost provinces where an ongoing insurgency has so far claimed more than 4,000 lives since January 2004.