BANGKOK, Nov. 13 (UPI) — A bomb exploded in southern Thailand killing at least four people and injuring four others at a village checkpoint in Khok Pho district of Pattani, a Muslim-majority province.
Police Col. Tanongsak Wanuspha, the Pattani police commander, said rebels who demand independence placed the bomb in position, Al Jazeera reported.
“The culprits placed a bomb under a chair at the checkpoint, killing four people. This attack was to disrupt [and] stir unrest,” Tanongsak said.
Col. Banphot Phunphien of the Internal Security Operation Command told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency the bomb was controlled by radio, and that the four casualties were “village defense volunteers.”
“Two died at the scene and two more died in hospital,” he said, adding others who were injured were hospitalized, but should be discharged soon.
Phunphien said another bomb exploded in the adjacent province of Narathiwat, injuring two Thailand military personnel.
Since taking power in a 2014 coup, Bangkok’s military government has made attempts to broker peace with rebel leaders, who are Muslim in Buddhist-majority Thailand, but the Malaysia-facilitated talks have not led to any breakthroughs, owing to internal discord among the rebels, and lack of trust between the government and rebel leaders.
The conflict between Thailand and the Muslim rebels, located in an area once part of a Malay Muslim sultanate, dates back to at least 1902, when Thailand annexed the region.
But rebel groups did not form until the 1960s, when another military dictatorship in Bangkok tried to intervene in Islamic schools. The Patani United Liberation Organization was born, until it faded into obscurity in the mid-1990s, but by 2004, a new militant movement based on a loose coalition of fighters reappeared.
Violence since then has resulted in 6,400 deaths and 11,000 injuries.
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