Soldier dies in blast

BANGKOK: A roadside bomb killed a 22-year-old Thai soldier on Wednesday and critically wounded another member of a patrol team providing security to teachers in the country’s insurgency-torn southern tip. Police said the explosive was detonated remotely while six soldiers were doing a security sweep on a road for teachers on their way to a school in Bacho district, Narathiwat province. “The remote control bomb went off while two of them stopped to check the suspicious object on the roadside,” Viroj Boonkhae, a police officer in Bacho, told AFP. The injured soldier has been hospitalised, he added. The Muslim-majority region borders Malaysia and has seen a decade of near-daily violence claim more than 6,500 lives. The insurgents seek greater autonomy from the Thai state, which annexed the region more than a century ago. Civilians have been the focus of bombings and shootings.