Attacks on polls, ballot convoys in South kill 3
An election official was killed and 11 people were wounded when a car carrying ballot boxes used in yesterday’s Senate election was bombed on its way to a counting centre in Narathiwat’s Rusoh district.
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Three people were killed and 17 others injured in a series of bomb explosions and shootings in the deep South yesterday, after weeks of relative peace.
The coordinated attacks were intended to disrupt voting in yesterday's Senate elections, police said.
The first attack occurred just one hour before polling stations opened at 8am. Suspected Muslim insurgents ambushed a convoy carrying voting slips to polling stations in Narathiwat's Si Sakhon district. They detonated a roadside bomb, killing Pol Lance-Corporal Sakchai Inlek. The headman of I-buetae village, Adeeya Waloh, and six other police officers were injured in an ensuing gunfight.
The attack delayed the opening of two polling stations in Si Sakhon district for half an hour and local residents were afraid to leave their homes to vote, said Narathiwat Election Commission chief Prateep Wutthiratanakowit.
Later in the afternoon, two suspected insurgents walked into a polling station in the province's Muang district and opened fire.
Pol Sgt-Major Chaiwat Dengka, 55, was shot dead by the pair who were posing as voters.
Chaiwat was shot in the back at point blank range with a pistol and died at the scene. Lance-Corporal Sawad Deethong was shot in the leg while trying to return fire, police said.
A few hours later, a bomb exploded in the middle of a road in Narathiwat's Rusoh district as a convoy carrying ballots passed by. One person was killed and 11 others were injured.
The attacks continued after the polls closed at 3pm. A 10-kilogram bomb was detonated on the roadside as a truck transporting ballots to Rusoh district passed by. Hasnee Sunobut, 25, was killed and another 11 election officials were injured, including an assistant village headman and the headmaster of Ban Yuegaebaru school. All of the injured were taken to a local hospital.
In neighbouring Yala province, a 20kg roadside bomb exploded in Raman district as a convoy of election security officials passed by, but none were injured. Police suspect Muslim militants had been waiting to detonate the bomb as the convoy passed, but the bomb did not explode on time.
Three officials were injured in Yala's Bannang Sata district when suspected militants detonated a roadside bomb as a convoy carrying voting slips passed by.
The attacks came one day after a group of militants ambushed a security team assigned to protect a polling station in Narathiwat's Joh I Rong district.
They also came just one day after the emergency decree was extended for another three months. Caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra imposed it last July in the provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, as well as some parts of Songkhla.
The three southernmost provinces have been plagued with almost daily bombings, shootings and arson attacks since early 2004. More than 1,200 people have been killed.
Narathiwat
The Nation
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