Heavily armed raiders have stolen a large quantity of explosives from a quarry in Thailand's largely Muslim south, days after a bomb attack in a region where a surge of violence has raised fears of a new separatist war.
About 10 masked men armed with AK-47 and M-16 assault rifles raided the quarry and made off with 1.4 tonnes of ammonium nitrate used in making explosives for blasting, 58 sticks of dynamite and 180 detonators, police say.
The Manu Rock Grinding Co quarry was closed when the raid took place on Tuesday evening with only two security guards on duty and the raiders went straight to the separate, poorly locked sheds where each item was kept, police at the scene said.
That suggested they knew exactly what they were looking for and where to find it at the quarry near the village of Libol, 70 km (40 miles) from the Malaysian border, they said.
On Saturday, a motorcycle bomb wounded 28 people, including Malaysian tourists, in the border town of Sungai Kolok.
It was the worst single incident in a surge of violence in the south, where many of Buddhist Thailand's six million Muslims live, which began in January with a raid on an army camp.
The raiders, who killed four soldiers, stole several hundred weapons, including M-16s.
More than 60 people, mostly officials and police but including three Buddhist monks, have been killed since the raid, which some officials fear may signal the renewal of a low-key separatist war fought in the 1970s and 1980s.