Two killed in bomb blast in southern Thailand

Two people died on Tuesday after a bomb went off outside a Thai elementary school in Tak Bai, southern Narathiwat province of Thailand, the police confirmed to Efe.

A father and his five-year-old daughter were killed when a motorcycle exploded at a time parents were dropping off their children at the school, said the army's Internal Security Operations Command, Channel News Asia reported.

A hospital worker confirmed the deaths to South China Morning Post, adding that 10 other adults -- six civilians and four police officers -- were wounded in the blast.

The attack comes almost a month after a series of explosions in several provinces of southern Thailand that killed 4 and injured 35, including ten foreign tourists in the popular island of Phuket.

Frequent armed attacks, assassinations and bomb blasts in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat have killed more than 6,500 since January 2004, when a Muslim insurgency active in the region resumed its armed struggle.

The insurgents decry discrimination by the dominant Buddhist community in the country, and demand the creation of an Islamic state, comprising the three provinces that once formed part of the Pattani Sultanate, annexed by Thailand a century ago.

--IANS

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