NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) — A string of bombs planted by suspected separatist rebels rocked Thailand's troubled south Monday, killing one person and injuring dozens near the Malaysian border, police said.
Explosives planted at entertainment venues across Sun Ngai Kolok town in Narathiwat province wounded 27 people in the early hours of Monday, two of them seriously, police said.
"It was likely done by militants who target innocent people during new year," local police chief Colonel Prabphan Meemongkon told AFP.
He said police managed to defuse one bomb at a hotel in the Muslim-majority region, where rebels are waging a bloody battle for a separate state, but five devices struck two other hotels nearby.
The first blasts hit at about 12:40 am Monday (1740 GMT Sunday), sending people fleeing into a hotel car park, where another bomb was hidden.
A police officer in Narathiwat said that explosives had been packed into cigarette packets, which were planted inside a hotel disco.
Another blast hit a hotel karaoke bar, he said.
Later in nearby Yala province, one person was killed and four were injured when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded outside a restaurant, police said.
More than 2,800 people have been killed in four years of separatist unrest in Thailand's south, an ethnic Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension.
Monday's attacks come a year after blasts hit the Thai capital Bangkok on New Year's Eve 2006, killing three. No one has yet been charged in connection with those attacks.
Security has been stepped up across southern Thailand over the New Year holiday.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
