Thailand: Suspected separatists kill at least 15 people in Yala province
Suspected separatist insurgents killed at least 15 and wounded four village defence volunteers in a late-night shooting at a security checkpoint in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south, security officials said.
The attackers in southern Yala province also used explosives and scattered nails on roads to delay pursuers late last night in what authorities described as the biggest gun attack in years.
“This is likely the work of the insurgents,” Colonel Pramote Prom-in, a regional security spokesman, told Reuters.
“This is one of the biggest attack in recent times,” he said.
A decade-old separatist insurgency in predominantly Buddhist Thailand’s largely ethnic Malay-Muslim provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat has killed nearly 7,000 people since 2004, according to Deep South Watch, which monitors the violence.