Bomb injures 28 in southern Thailand provincial capital

Oct 19, 2009
DPA

Pattani, Thailand - An explosion Monday at a crowded morning market in Yala City injured 28 people, two of them critically, army sources said.

The bomb, planted inside a motorcycle that was parked near a pork meat vendor at Yala's open-air market, exploded at 7:30 am, injuring the civilians and three soldiers, First Army Region chief Lieutenant General Phichit Wisaijorn said.

He blamed Muslim separatists for the latest act of violence.

'We had received a tipoff to prepare for a car bomb, but they used a motorcycle instead,' Phichit said. Police reportedly checked the parked motorcycle minutes before it went off, but failed to detect the bomb.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces - Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala - have been plagued by violence since January 4, 2004, when Muslim militants raided an army depot, killing four soldiers and making off with 300 weapons, escalating the separatist struggle.

An estimated 3,500 people have died in clashes, bombings, revenge killings and beheadings in Thailand's so-called deep south

Besides a long-simmering separatist struggle in the region, which borders Malaysia, the three provinces have a recent history of lucrative but illicit trade in smuggling, drugs and protection rackets.

About 80 per cent of the region's 2 million people are Muslims. Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who lived in the region, some 70,000 have reportedly left their homes over the past six years.

Although the region, which centuries ago was the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani, was conquered by Bangkok about 200 years ago, it has never wholly submitted to Thai rule.

Analysts said the region's Muslim population, the majority of whom speak a Malay dialect and follow Malay customs, feels alienated from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state.

2 bombs in southern Thailand wound 71

Police officials survey the site of a car bomb which exploded near an outdoor meeting of village chiefs in southern Thailand's Narathiwat province November 4, 2008. (Surapan Boonthanom/Reuters)

Wednesday, November 05, 2008
By SUMETH PANPETCH

SUKHIRIN, Thailand (AP) — Suspected Muslim insurgents detonated two bombs at a tea stall and shopping area Tuesday in insurgency-wracked southern Thailand, killing one person and wounding at least 71, police said.

It was the largest attack in several months in Thailand's restive south, which has been gripped by a Muslim insurgency since 2004.

The first blast appeared to target a meeting of 300 village chiefs and local officials from Narathiwat province who were leaving their monthly meeting when the explosion occurred in the building's parking lot, said police chief Maj. Gen. Surachai Suebsuk. The bomb was hidden inside a parked car.

The building in Sukhirin district also housed an indoor fruit market that was busy with shoppers when the blast occurred about noon, at the start of the normally crowded lunch hour, he said.

"The insurgents aimed to kill," Surachai said. "Most of the wounded were civilian officials who were leaving the meeting and heading for their cars."

Minutes later, a second bomb hidden in a motorcycle went off outside a nearby tea shop, Surachai said. The police chief had initially said that three bombs exploded but then said the last blast was caused by an exploding tire, not a bomb.

Cell phone signals were cut off in the area to prevent attackers from triggering new explosions by mobile phone, he said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts.

Violence in the south is usually blamed on Muslim insurgents. The southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani have been terrorized by regular attacks since early 2004, when a separatist movement flared after a lull of more than two decades.

Attacks generally take the form of drive-by shootings and small-scale bombings intended to frighten Buddhist residents into leaving the area. Suspected insurgents mainly target people seen as collaborating with the government, including soldiers, police, informants and civilians.

On Aug. 21, two bombs in Narathiwat killed two people and wounded 30. The two fatalities were a Thai reporter and a rescue worker responding to the first attack when a second explosion went off.

The last large-scale coordinated attack occurred Feb. 18, 2007, when a string of bombings and shootings by suspected insurgents killed eight people and wounded almost 70 in four provinces.

More than 3,300 people have been killed since January 2004 in the three provinces, which are the only Muslim-dominated areas in the Buddhist-majority country.

Thailand's population is about 90 percent Buddhist, and many of the country's Muslims feel they are treated as second-class citizens.