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NARATHIWAT: At least one soldier died and five were seriously injured in a roadside bomb attack and gun fight early Tuesday morning in Thailand's restive south, police said.
A 22-year-old private died instantly when separatist militants detonated a powerful remote-controlled 20-kilogramme bomb hidden in a fire extinguisher and buried in the middle of the road.
Immediately after the bomb exploded, militants appeared carrying assault rifles and exchanged gunfire with the soldiers.
Five of 12 soldiers, who were patrolling the Cho-Ai-Rong district of Narathiwat province, were seriously wounded, police said.
Meanwhile a 25-year-old police corporal died overnight at Yala provincial hospital from another bomb attack Monday in Raman district.
Violence continues to rock the southern border provinces, despite claims by self-proclaimed separatist leaders last week who announced a ceasefire on national television.
More than 3,300 people have been killed since separatist unrest broke out in January 2004 in the south, which was an autonomous Malay sultanate until Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension.
- AFP/yb
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