Brutes Slay Two Policeman- Sunday

[The_Eye_Of_Sauron]

More paper cranes needed?

Blast in south kills 2 Thai police

Sunday, April 24, 2005 Posted: 0900 GMT (1700 HKT)

BANGKOK, Thailand (Reuters) -- A bomb exploded in Thailand's mainly Muslim south on Sunday, killing two policemen and wounding three others a day after Thailand's queen condemned those behind a 15-month wave of violence.

The blast occured near a border checkpoint in the district of Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat province, one of three mainly Muslim provinces bordering Malaysia, police said.

Two policeman and one villager were wounded and rushed to hospital.

"This was caused by bad people who want to create unrest in the three provinces in the south," Ong-art Intrara-aree, chief of the Munoh sub-district where the attack occurred, told a Bangkok radio station.

The blast was the latest in a series of attacks in which security officials have blamed Muslim separatists and local gangs for violence that has killed more 600 people since January 2004.

In a nationally-televised address on Saturday, Queen Sirikit urged Thais to unite against the violence in the south, which she said threatened the country's lucrative tourist industry.

"We all have to condemn such actions as being totally devoid of humanity. We have to let these brutes know -- without taking arms -- what we feel," she was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post newspaper.

Sunday's attack came hours before the government-appointed National Reconciliation Commission was due to release reports on two of the bloodiest incidents in the 15-month wave of unrest.