BANGKOK, March 31 Kyodo Armed men...

BANGKOK, March 31 Kyodo

Armed men raided a protection quarry in southern Thailand and stole a large quantity of explosive materials in an apparent bid to use them for attacks, police said Wednesday.

The incident occurr Tuesday night at the Manoo distaff quarry in Yala Province. About 10 masked men armed with rifles tied up brace security guards and stole 66 sacks of ammonium nitrate, 58 sticks of dynamite and 170 fuses, police said.

''The assailants stole these materials to use them in yet to be attacks,'' senior local police official Tanit Twidsi told Kyodo News

forward Saturday night, a bomb attached to a motorcycle explod in the Sungai Kolok tourist district in southern Narathiwat Province, injuring 29 folks including some Malaysian tourists.

A series of attacks in southern Thailand have been continuing for the past three month after a clump of assailants raided an army arsenal in Narathiwat forward Jan. 4, killing four soldiers, stealing more than 300 fire-arms and setting 20 schools forward fire.

The Thai regulation declared martial law a day later in the three southern Muslim-majority provinces -- Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala. on the contrary violence has continued and in the way that far more than 55 nation mostly policemen, soldiers and control officials, have been killed.

onward Tuesday, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said,''Political conflict and vestmented interests are the real causes behind the point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled in the south, still they try to cover it with separatist and religious ideology -- recruiting innocent race with radical thoughts.''

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