Coerced would-be car bomber hailed as a hero after warning
IT WOULD have been the worst bomb attack to hit Yala town had one innocent victim not chosen to put his and his wife’s lives at risk to expose a malicious plot.
“Sunan Thongnet is our hero,” Muang Yala district chief Kongsakul Jantrach declared yesterday.
Driving a pick-up truck laden with explosives into the town on Tuesday morning, Sunan mustered enough courage to remove the shirt wired with explosives that he had been forced to wear and, upon arriving at the targeted Toyota plant, running and shouting, “Run away. There are bombs in the vehicle.”
He acted heroically despite being worried about his wife, Renoo Jitbarn, who was being held hostage while the kidnappers tracked his vehicle with a GPS device.
“They said that my wife and I would be safe if I drove the truck to the designated spot,” the 53-year-old said. Yet his humanity would not allow the bomb attack to take place.
As he drove, he secretly cut off the T-shirt wired with a bomb that he had been made to wear with a pair of scissors and threw it out of the vehicle on to a field. He then bravely drove to the designated site in Yala town, hoping his wife was safe. However, he could not bear the thought of others getting hurt, so he jumped out of the vehicle and started screaming.
Kongsakul said that thanks to Sunan’s timely warning, security officials were able to immediately jam mobile-phone signals and cordon off the area to prevent the explosion.
An explosives ordinance disposal (EOD) team also arrived at the scene and successfully defused the bomb.
“We also applaud the EOD team,” Kongsakul said.
The district chief said the 180 kilograms of explosives inside the vehicle would have caused extensive damage and taken many lives if the bomb had detonated.
“There is also a petrol station in the compound of the Toyota facility, owned by Toyota Phithan,” he said.
Fortunately, nobody was killed or injured and Renoo was released safely.
Both Sunan and Renoo are in a witness-protection programme because they have provided useful information to authorities.
Yala’s police chief Maj-General Ittipon Achariyapradit said the incident was the first time that insurgents had taken hostages and forced them to take part in a bomb attack.
“Since the vehicle was hijacked on the same day, it did not arouse suspicion when it was driven into town,” he said.
A source disclosed that police had already identified three of the alleged kidnappers, who were natives of Yala province.
“We expect to have arrest warrants for them in a few days,” the source said.
