YALA, Thailand, January 14 (SPA) - Eight soldiers werekilled and six wounded in ambushes by suspected separatistsin Thailand's South on Monday, army and police spokesmen said. "The soldiers were ambushed after escorting teachers toschools and eight of them were killed," army Colonel AcraTiproch was quoted as saying by Reuters. The ambush occurred near a village in Narathiwat province. A military Humvee was blown up by a 20-kg (44-lb) roadsidebomb, then at least 20 militants attacked, police said. "The head of one of the dead soldiers was found next to theupside-down Humvee and the faces and bodies of others were hit with so much shrapnel and bullets that they can't berecognised," a local journalist who visited the scene said. The militants walked away with eight M-16 rifles and anM-60 machinegun, an army statement said. Bomb squads defused a second roadside bomb meant to hitofficials rushing to the scene, police said. Another group of soldiers escorting teachers, themselvesfrequent targets in four years of separatist insurgency as asymbol of the largely Buddhist state, also clashed withmilitants and two were wounded, he said. Suspected militants also disrupted the mobile phone networkin the three southernmost provinces, where 2,800 people havebeen killed in the latest insurgency in the former sultanatepopulated largely by ethnic Malays. Acra said rebels had set several transmission towers onfire.--SPA www.spa.gov.sa/517434