Suspected Muslim insurgents have killed at least seven people in back-to-back shooting and bomb attacks in Thailand’s troubled south, police said Monday. On Sunday evening an unknown number of gunmen dressed as women, travelling in three pick-up trucks, opened fire on a checkpoint in the main town of Narathiwat province killing two rangers. Shortly afterwards a bomb exploded at a nearby supermarket, followed by a second bomb at another supermarket about 300 metres away, causing fires that spread through shophouses and took three hours to extinguish. Police said they found two charred bodies of the male owner and a female teacher in the first shop, while a young boy and his parents were found dead in the second.
Another seven people suffered burns in the attacks, which happened within the space of half an hour – the latest in a series of increasingly brazen attacks by the shadowy militants. Thailand’s southernmost provinces have been plagued by more than eight years of conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 4,800 people, both Muslims and Buddhists.
