HAT YAI, Thailand (AP) Three bomb squad officers were killed on Monday while inspecting a suspicious item beside a road in Thailand's insurgency-plagued south, police said.
Suspected insurgents detonated an improvised bomb in a box when the squad arrived to check out a location where tires had been burned
in Bacho district in Narathiwat province, police Col. Pakdee Preechachon said on Monday.
A common militant tactic is to initiate a false attack then strike the security officers who respond to it.
A second bomb was defused at the scene.
More than 5,000 people have been killed since an Islamic insurgency erupted in 2004 in Thailand's three southernmost provinces, which are predominantly Muslim while the rest of the country is Buddhist dominated.
