Thai hospital workers attend to an injured soldier after a bomb blast at a military base planted by suspected separatist militants in bacho district in Thailand’s southern province of Narathiwat yesterday.

 

 

AFP/Bangkok

Four soldiers were killed and another four seriously injured while attempting to defuse a bomb at an army base in Thailand’s unrest-plagued south yesterday, police said.

The blast happened after troops moved the device, which was hidden in a gas tank and placed under a bridge, to a base in Narathiwat, one of several provinces in southern Thailand where a bloody nine-year insurgency has claimed thousands of lives.

“They were inspecting and defusing the civilian-made bomb” when it exploded, said local police lieutenant colonel Sanit Suwanno.

More than 5,500 people have been killed in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south since 2004, with shadowy insurgent groups blamed for near-daily bombings and shootings.

Security personnel and those connected with the government are regularly targeted, as well as Muslims perceived to be collaborating with the authorities.

Thailand held its first official peace talks with southern insurgents at the end of March, during a one-day meeting with representatives of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) in Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur.