Narthaiwat (Thailand): One soldier has been killed and five wounded in a bomb and shooting attack by separatist militants in Thailand's Muslim-majority south, police said today.

The rebels detonated a five-kilogramme roadside bomb late yesterday, targeting a group of soldiers in a pick-up truck in Narathiwat province, police said.

Militants then opened fire, hitting six soldiers before fleeing the scene. One soldier later died in hospital.

Earlier yesterday, a bomb exploded near a busy market in neighbouring Yala province, wounding 13 people including two policemen and a four-year-old boy.

More than 3,000 people have been killed since unrest broke out in the far south in January 2004. The region was an ethnic Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension.

The government on Friday announced that it was extending a divisive state of emergency in the three southernmost provinces.

Human rights groups have said the law -- in force since July 2005 -- creates a climate of impunity in the tense region and gives wide-ranging powers to the security forces, further alienating the Muslim population. 
Source : PTI