A roadside blast killed five security officers traveling to the scene of a fatal shooting in the south of Thailand yesterday, police said, amid a spike in attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The officers, responding to reports that a man had been shot on Thursday night in a rubber plantation in Narathiwat Province, were targeted by one of two bombs hidden on the route into the area.
“Our officials went to the scene, but there was an explosion on the way,” said police Lieutenant Colonel Prakard Eiadklai, inspector at the local Rue Soh District police station.
He said one person was wounded in the attack. The second bomb was defused and authorities were later able to reach the body of the shooting victim.
In a separate blast in Yala on Thursday, five refuse collectors were wounded, two of them seriously, on their morning rounds when a device hidden in a garbage bag was detonated.
About 4,800 people have been killed since rebels launched an uprising in early 2004, according to the latest figures from Deep South Watch, which monitors the conflict in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces.
The organization, which has recorded 73 attacks since the beginning of this month, said violence in the Muslim majority south normally intensifies during Ramadan, which ends on Monday.
However, Supaporn Panasnachee of Deep South Watch said this year the spike during the religious fasting month comes amid intensifying conflict.
“The trend of a higher frequency and more violent attacks started a few months ago,” she said, adding that there were 69 incidents last month.
Rights groups say the militants are rebelling against a long history of perceived discrimination against ethnic Malay Muslims in the deep south by authorities in the Buddhist-majority nation, including alleged abuses by the army.
However, the militants keep a low profile and have not publicly stated their goals.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done