Car bomb hits officials in deep South:

Seventy people were hurt in an attack police said was meant to inflict maximum damage.

At least 12 of the victims were in critical condition. A woman had been reported as dying from the explosion, but authorities said she was still fighting for her life at Sukhirin Hospital.

The homemade explosive was packed inside a fire extinguisher weighing about 50 kilograms and placed inside a sedan parked alongside the personal vehicles of officials attending the meeting.

Minutes later, a second bomb tied to a motorbike was detonated near a teashop. A third blast was heard soon after, but it was an exploding tyre, not a bomb.

Vice governor Niphan Naraphitakkul said the first bomb was aimed at some 300 officials as they were walking to their vehicles.

The victims were taken to hospitals in Sungai Kolok and Sukhirin, with about 30 in serious condition, a hospital source said.

Sukhirin chief Worachet Promopart said violent incidents were rare in his district, compared to other areas in the Muslimmajority border area.

"We had received briefings from intelligence officials warning about attacks on government installations in Muang district but they said noth¬ing about Sukirin," he said.

Human Rights Watch's Sunai Phasuk said the fact that insurgents employed powerful explosions to take out relatively lowprofile targets in a district that is quite remote suggests a titfortat between the local militant cell and security officials in the area.

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

Assoc Professor Srisompob Jitpiromya, director of the Deep South Watch centre at the Prince of Songkhla University Pattani, said that since January 2004, this wave of insurgency attacks  had left 3,200 dead and 5,226 injured in the Malayspeaking southernmost provinces.

He said the government had become complacent over this past year as rebel attacks became more intermittent. However, the level of uncertainty and insecurity was still very high.

"The problem with the government is that it doesn't treat the insurgency in the deep South as a conflict but as an issue of law and order that can be handled by the military alone," he said.