Daily Times

BANGKOK: A car bomb exploded at a major checkpoint in Thailand’s insurgency-torn south on Tuesday wounding two officers, police said, the latest in a spate of attacks across the Muslim-majority region.

The border area has languished under more than a decade of violence between the Buddhist-majority state and shadowy Muslim rebels seeing greater autonomy for the culturally distinct provinces.

Near-daily shootings and roadside bombs have left more than 6,500 dead since 2004, most of them civilians.

Tuesday’s car bomb, a less frequent form of attack, was the second to strike the region in less than two weeks.

“The bomb was hidden inside a pick-up truck. The suspects drove and parked the truck at the checkpoint before fleeing,” said Lieutenant Colonel Sompong Rongyang, a police officer at the scene in Nong Chik, a district in Pattani province.

“Two police sustained injuries and were sent to the hospital,” he said of the attack, which left the vehicle engulfed in flames and sent plumes of smoke streaming into the sky.