NARATHIWAT – Police found a one kilogramme bomb in a fruit basket at a local vendor’s house in Baan Bricha in Rusoe district on Thursday, reports said.
Police, rescue crews and soldiers rushed to the scene after a local resident tipped them off about a suspicious looking object he believed to be a bomb.
The bomb had been assembled in an iron box, with a detonator triggered by a mobile phone, and hidden in a fruit basket. They shut down phone signals in the area and defused the bomb. It took them about 20 minutes.
Police searched the house and found clues that somebody broke into the house and planted the bomb. The owner of the house said she recently bought it from the family of a victim of the insurgents.
Police believe that the insurgents planted the bomb to scare people off from moving into the village because they want to be able to move around freely.
Many people have moved out of the village since the insurgency resurfaced in 2004, with only about 40 families living in the area now, half the previous number, police said.