Thai South Bomb Kills Police Commander

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Thai south bomb kills police commander

YALA (AFP) -- A senior police commander was killed Friday when militants in Thailand's troubled south ambushed his pick-up truck with a roadside bomb and gunfire, police said.

A six-year separatist insurgency in Thailand's restive Muslim-majority southern provinces bordering Malaysia has left more than 4,000 people dead and thousands more wounded.

Colonel Sompian Eksomya, 59, the police commander for Bannang Sata district in Yala province, was pronounced dead on the way to hospital after the attack, which also seriously wounded three of his subordinates.

Police said he was killed by a 20 kilo (44 pound) bomb hidden in a fire extinguisher and that militants raked the truck with gunfire after the blast.

Sompian was a prominent figure in Thai media after coming to Bangkok in recent weeks to air grievances about unfair treatment because police had rejected his request to be transferred out of the south.

The shadowy militant groups in the region never publicly state their goals but have targeted both Buddhists and Muslims, sometimes using gruesome methods such as beheadings and crucifixions.

The region was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until it was annexed in 1902 by mainly Buddhist Thailand and tensions have bubbled there ever since, flaring up into the current insurgency in January 2004.

-- ©Copyright AFP 2010-03-12

Published with written approval from AFP.

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