Two policemen escaped unhurt when a bomb went off underneath their armoured pickup truck on a road in Pattani's Khok Pho district on Monday night.
Pol Lt Col Paphan Chanklab, deputy chief of Napradu police station in Khok Pho district, yesterday led a team of forensic police to examine the scene of the explosion, in front of a Chinese cemetery on the Talad Mai-Khok Sung Road in tambon Napradu. The blast occurred about 8.30pm.
Investigators said it was a home-made bomb, weighing about 20kg, which was detonated remotely by mobile phone when the police vehicle passed over it.
The blast severely damaged the pickup, but the officers inside the vehicle, Pol L/Cpl Thanupol Petcharanont and Pol L/Col Kasama Boonma, emerged unscathed.
Meanwhile, police believed Sunday's bomb attack on a police team providing security for a polling unit in Narathiwat's Rueso district was the work of insurgents.
Pol Lt Gen Yongyuth Charoenvanit, chief of police in the deep South, said police have obtained information an insurgent network operating in tambon Rian in Rueso district and adjacent areas was responsible for the blast in which two police officers were killed and three others wounded.
According to investigators, the bomb was packed in a 50kg cooking gas cylinder and planted on the road to the polling unit.
It was detonated as police vehicles drove by.
A source at a local security agency said Hamsan Useng, a suspected insurgent, was spotted riding a motorcycle to a local market two days before the explosion occurred.