Scores of heavily armed gunmen stormed a military base in unrest-plagued southern Thailand, in a major assault that left at least 16 attackers dead, a military spokesman said. The attack was one of the most ambitious in several years of violence in Thailand’s deep south. No military casualties were reported in the early hours assault at the base in Bacho district of Narathiwat province, one of three Muslim-dominated provinces near the border with Malaysia. “We learned of the attack in advance from defected militants,” Colonel Pramote Promin, the southern army spokesman, told Thai television. “We were able to secure the camp. All of our force are safe.” He added that a key local leader of the fighters, who wore bulletproof vests during the attack, had been killed in the clashes.
