SECURITY officers have arrested the man who allegedly made the car bomb that was safely defused in a gas station in Yala’s Raman district on Wednesday night.

Abdullateh Riang, 39, reportedly confessed to making the bomb and also led officers to another two explosives that he had prepared for future attacks.

His arrest followed a 3am ranger-police operation in Ban Bango Puloh in Tambon Khok Sator in Narathiwat’s Rusoh district. The two assembled bombs were hidden in the suspect’s hometown of Tambon Riang in Rusoh, said the head of the 41st Ranger Forces Regiment’s special task unit, Colonel Sitthisak Jenbanjong.

Abdullateh is being held for further interrogation at the Narathiwat 30th Special Task Force base.

His arrest involves an incident on Wednesday when two men wearing facemasks and abayas, which are typically worn by women, drove a pick-up truck into a gas station in Tambon Kayu Bokoh in Raman at 6pm on Wednesday.

The two men asked for a full tank of gasoline but then ran out of the station and fled on a motorcycle, causing staff to alert police about their suspicion of a car bomb.

After cordoning off the area as a precaution, a bomb squad found and defused a 90-kilogram makeshift bomb attached to a 15kg cooking gas cylinder and a communication radio detonator in the truck’s back seat.

An investigation found that the Mazda truck, which had a fake licence plate, had been stolen from a group of metalworkers on July 26 in Tambon Lam Mai of Muang Yala district. A worker Adisorn Sukhakhern was killed during the robbery and two others were injured.

A national security source said authorities believed that insurgent trainer Masukareunor Yakumor of the Runda Kumpulan Kecil (RKK) militant group, who once had a Bt500,000 bounty on his head, |was behind the Raman bomb attempt.

Masukareunor and other accomplices were reportedly seen earlier in nearby Tambon Asong meeting sympathisers. Masukareunor is a weapons and explosives expert linked to several violent incidents, including an attack on a Narathiwat military outpost in January 2011. The attack resulted in the deaths of four soldiers and insurgents made off with 60 weapons.