Posted on 02/17/2005 10:44:25 PM PST by JimSEA
BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand has felt an alarming escalation of violence in the Muslim-majority south marked by an unprecedented car bomb that killed six people just hours after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had left the region.
The bomb also left 44 people injured, including up to five critically, when it detonated Thursday night inside a pickup truck parked next to a busy hotel in Sungai Kolok, a town on the Malaysian border.
"One of the injured died this morning at Sungai Kolok hospital," taking the toll to six, a police officer in the town told AFP.
The attack was the deadliest single bombing in a campaign of violence that has gripped the Muslim-dominated deep south for the past 13 months and claimed about 600 lives.
It came just hours after Thaksin cut short a visit to the region during which he unveiled a highly controversial plan to block state funding for more than 350 "red zone" villages deemed to be prone to violence and sympathetic to separatists.
Most of the red villages are in Narathiwat, the province where the blast occurred.
Thaksin said it was unlikely that foreign terrorist elements were involved in the attack but admitted it was aimed at putting pressure on his administration.
"The perpetrators were the offspring of those (suspected separatist militants) with outstanding arrest warrants and their aim was to put pressure on the government," he told reporters in Bangkok.
Narathiwat governor Pracha Taerat said the pickup was laden with about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives and was detonated outside the Marina Hotel in an area crowded with open-air beer bars.
He said the scale of the explosion and the methods used by the assailants marked a worrying new twist in the violence.
"We did not expect this kind of car bomb. It is unprecedented in Thailand," the governor said in a televised interview late Thursday.
All the dead are believed to be Thai, though police said they had officially confirmed the identity of only two victims.
The area, a scene of devastation after the blast, was cordoned off as forensic officers continued Friday to pore over the site to collect evidence, police said.
Television footage showed fires raging on the road outside the hotel moments after the explosion. A power cut had blacked out the area, and glass and debris was strewn across the road more than a block away as the wounded were laid into the backs of pickups for transport to hospital.
Four cars, five motorcycles and a number of nearby shops, restaurants and bars were destroyed by the bomb, while the Marina Hotel, where a wedding party had gathered on the third floor at the time of the explosion, suffered considerable damage.
Sungai Kolok, along the Malaysian border, has a thriving nightlife district routinely visited by scores of Thai and Malaysian tourists. It has been the scene of three other major blasts since last March.
Thaksin had not visited Sungai Kolok on his trip but he had spent time the previous day in several spots in Narathiwat, one of three provinces that have endured the brunt of the separatist unrest.
A small bomb exploded meanwhile Friday in neighbouring Yala province, slightly injuring two soldiers assigned to provide protection for teachers fearful of attacks, police told AFP.
like the thais need more tradegy in their lives. Sheesh
It appears to me that the Terrorists are having trouble convincing their oppressed Muslim masses to follow them, so they are killing them for not doing so. The Iraqi Elections have those Terrorists scumbags back on their heels and I believe we will soon see a popular uprising against the oppressive Theocratic Governments in the Middle East.
Can someone please tell me what TROP is? Throw me a bone ;-) Thanks
It took me a while too. The Religion Of Peace as designated by their mouthpieces and religious appologists. I makes a good sarcastic reference.
Thanks , I've been seeing it around and just couldn't figure it out :)
I agree, when the muzzies exploded a bomb in a crowded market in Mumbai (Bombay as everyone outside the BBC calls it) two years ago within the hour the BBC was saying it was in response to some comment made by some local hindu politician. When the mayor was interviewed on the 1pm radio news he received a barrage of hostile questions about the attitudes of local hindus, it was incredible. Of course it was the same after Beslan, when the terrorists were referred to as 'alleged militants', armed gunmen who take over a school and then murder three hundred children are only alleged to be militants! The attitudes of the BBC to muslim terrorism is beginning to verge on the psychotic.
The muslims in southern Thailand have been murdering policemen, civil servants and teachers for nearly four years and never once got on the BBC's radar but as soon as the government started cracking down the BBC are on it like fleas on a mangy hound. I mean lets face it the Thais are famous around the world for their vicious, nasty, oppressive bullying nature aren't they? It must be their fault that the poor inoffensive muslims are beheading buddhist monks mustn't it?
I think it is only a matter of time before a big one goes off in Phuket or Bangkok in the beer bars where the westerners hang out it will be Bali II.
I remember the Mumbai atrocity well and am still amazed there wasn't a big attack on the Muslims afterward.
I seem to recall a bomb outside a strip of beer bars in Hat Yai (I might be wrong about the town) which injured thirty last year, they were mainly bar girls and Malaysian guys up for the weekend. You can just see how such places would dive the RoPers crazy. I've noticed as I visit Phuket that new mosques are opening all the time, it's quite a bit down south and easy to get to that's why I think soi Bangla is such an obvious target.
that was a warning for sure. It was a motorcycle bomb outside the beer bars as you recall. The Saudi's have been financing school and Mosque building -- even in the North where we are.
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