Bomb kills two Buddhist teachers in Thai south

BANGKOK, May 10: A bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded in a busy market in Thailand's restive Muslim south today, killing two Buddhist teachers and wounding 14 shoppers, police said.

''The bomb was hidden in a motorcycle that was parked next to a truck bringing soldiers to the market to buy their daily stuff,'' police Colonel Somporn Meesuk told Reuters by telephone from the scene in the province of Pattani.

More than 1,300 people have been killed in two years of separatist violence in the three Muslim-majority provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.

The government of overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand has tried many ways to end the violence and win the hearts and minds of the 1.8 million people in the region bordering Malaysia, ranging from brute force to promises of development aid.

Yet militant attacks on security forces, officials and ordinary people continue almost daily in the region where most people speak a Malay dialect.

REUTERS