Three bombs hit Narathiwat, killing one

Narathiwat's vice governor, Niphan Naraphitakkul, said one bomb was hidden at a tea stall near the meeting venue where kamnans, village chiefs and local officials from Sukirin district were gathering for their monthly meeting.

The explosion went off just before noon as some 300 local officers were leaving the meeting venue and heading to their personal vehicles. This suggested that the person who detonated the bomb had his targets in sight, said Niphan.

Narathiwat police chief Maj. Gen. Surachai Suebsuk. The bomb was left inside a garbage bin, he said.

Minutes later, two bombs ripped through the parking lot of a nearby fruit market. One of the bombs was planted in a car, and the other in a motorcycle, police said.

 Victims were rushed to hospitals in Sungai Kolok and Sukirin districts of Narathiwat.

The breakdown of injuries at these two locations was made available. About 30 people are being treated for serious injuries, a hospital source said.

  Sukirin district chief, Worachet Promopart, said violence incident in his district is quite low compared to other areas in the Muslim-majority deep South.

"We have received briefing from intelligence officials warning against attacks on government installations in Narathiwat's Muang district but they said nothing about Sukirin," Worachet said.

Human Rights Watch's Sunai Phasuk said the fact that insurgents employed powerful explosions to take out relatively low profile targets in district that is quite remote suggested that the incident may have been a tit-for-tat between local militant cell and security officials in the area.

"It was in response to something specifics," Sunai said. "If anything, this was a strong statement to the security apparatus," he added.

Director of the Deep South Watch, a centre at the Prince of Songkhla Univeristy in Pattani, Associated Professor Srisompob Jitpiromya, said since January 2004, the ongoing violence stemming from this wave of insurgency have claimed almost 3,200 people and injured 5,226 in the Malay-speaking region of Thailand's southernmost provinces. 

Srisompob said the government has become complacent over this past year because of the drop in the number of violent incidents. However, the level of uncertainty and insecurity are still very high.

The problem with the Thai government is that they don't treat the insurgency in the deep South as a conflict but an issue of law and order that can be handle by the military alone, Srisompob said.

"If you look around the world, governments with similar problems agreed that these conflict must have political solution," Srisompob said.

Moreover, said Srisompob, political instability in the country has added to the problem in the restive region as political leaders placed their priority elsewhere.

While most of the bomb attacks in the deep South were carried out in the form of roadside attack against military patrol, the few that have emerged in the restive region have had devastating effect on security apparatus. These powerful blasts also chipped away government's credibility and the so-called claim that the situation has improved.