12 Pattani schools shut doors after teacher slain

12 Pattani schools shut doors after teacher slain

Eleven schools in Pattani's Yarang district will be closed until next week and another will be shut indefinitely following the murder of a teacher on Monday.

Classes will be suspended until Monday to allow teachers to attend the funeral of Athikhom Tiwong, who taught at Ban Prajan School in the district, according to a local source.

Some teachers also needed time to recover from the news of Athikhom's murder.

Athikhom, a 34-year-old physical education teacher, was shot dead in a drive-by shooting as he rode a motorcycle home from the school in Muang district on Monday evening.

An unidentified attacker on another motorcycle fired on him with an assault rifle as they rode down the Pattani-Yala road.

Police suspect the attack was the work of insurgents, saying they found a leaflet at the scene which appeared to have been produced by separatists.

The suspension of classes is necessary in Yarang as teachers' morale is low after the attack, Ban Prajan School director Waemasna Sahdeng said.

In Narathiwat's Waeng district, a bomb blast wounded four villagers, including an eight-year-old boy, while defence volunteers were removing spikes from a road.

The bomb, stuffed inside a fire extinguisher, was placed by a section of the Waeng-Sukhirin road in tambon Kayukhala. The victims sustained minor injuries because the bomb did not detonate properly, police said.

Police and military officers yesterday apprehended two suspects, wanted for the murder of four policemen on Friday, during a raid on a house in Moo 3 in Narathiwat's tambon Rueso. The suspects were named as Sukri Salae, 22, and his brother Abdukarim, 30.

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