Grenade blast wounds 4 soldiers at Malaysian border
10 Jan 2007 13:10:17 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds quotes by deputy army chief in paragraphs 6,7) KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 10 (Reuters) - A grenade exploded on Wednesday at a Malaysian army post on the border with Thailand, wounding four troops, the Malaysian army said. "There was a hand-grenade blast and there were four injured," army spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Fadzlette Othman Merican Idris said. She said the grenade exploded at about 5 a.m. local time (2100 GMT Tuesday) at a border post manned by Malaysian forces at Ban Din Samoe but details were still sketchy. The four wounded troops, attached to the Royal Malay Regiment, were in stable condition in hospital in Malaysia's northwest state of Kedah, which borders Thailand. "Someone must have thrown it to our force. We cannot identify yet who threw it," she added. Army deputy chief Lieutenant-General Mohamad Ismail Jamaluddin said the army remained on alert but stressed that border security was under control. "There's no plan to deploy more troops," he said after visiting the injured. "We are still not sure what actually happened and I don't want to speculate." But a Kedah military official, who declined to give his name, told Reuters by telephone: "It's an interior issue, not an exterior one." He did not elaborate.
