Published on January 21, 2006 - A bomb went off near a DTAC mobile-phone tower yesterday morning, killing a confessed former insurgent. Elsewhere another person died and two others were injured during the latest round of attacks in the Muslim-majority South. Manor Binyasing, 63, a cattle-herder and an erstwhile Muslim insurgent who turned himself in to authorities a decade ago, was killed as a five-kilogram bomb went off near a DTAC tower.

The explosion occurred just a day after some 200 suspected Muslim insurgents had set fire to more than 40 mobile-phone transmission stations and aerials across four provinces in the deep South.

Narathiwat Governor Pracha Therat theorised that the militant who detonated the bomb had been a foreigner who mistimed the explosion, killing Manor by mistake.

Pol Lieutenant Netiwut Deekaew added that the bomb had very likely been targeted at DTAC technicians who were due to repair an aerial damaged by an attack on Wednesday.

Investigators said the bomb had blasted a crater 50cm deep and scattered shrapnel in a 30m radius. Among the debris, police found the wreckage of a mobile phone and a Malaysian SIM card.

Security officials have been trying hard to foil insurgents in their tactic of setting off explosives by remote control using mobile phones. Mobile-phone users living in the three southernmost provinces are required to register their pre-paid SIM cards. Authorities are also seeking cooperation from their Malay-sian counterparts to block mobile signal transmission from across the border.

In Pattani, ICT Minister Sora-at Klinpratoom met mobile-phone representatives and civil servants yesterday to discuss the coordinated attacks on Thai mobile-phone networks last Wednesday.

Sora-at said that while the targeted networks continued to provide services in certain areas, they needed another two days to get their systems back in full working order again.

He recommended that mobile service-providers coordinate with tambon administrative organisations in installing surveillance cameras at transmission stations in case of future attacks.

Elsewhere, the unrelenting violence continued to take its toll, claiming another life and injuring two other people. In Pattani's Mai Kaen district, two suspected militants on a motorbike lobbed two grenades into a group of labourers.

Choo Promthep and Prasert Kongthong were injured in the attack and sent to a local hospital.

At the crime scene, investigating officials found leaflets that said: "You arrest innocents, and I will kill your people. One arrested, one killed."

In a separate incident, Supasin Woh, 46, was shot dead by unknown attackers while he was smoking outside his house in Sungai Padi district of Narathiwat early yesterday morning.

The Nation
Narathiwat