Yala blasts kill 3, injure 20
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Three people were killed and some 20 injured, with three in critical condition, by a series of bomb blasts that rocked the city of Yala on Tuesday evening - the seventh anniversary of the Tak Bai massacre.
Of the dead, two are believed to have been insurgents, both residents of Pattani’s Yarang district, who died from a bomb that went off prematurely. The pair was allegedly carrying the bomb through the Old Market section of Yala’s Muang district and appeared to be heading toward the commercial centre of the city.
An eyewitness said the blast had severed the limbs of the two suspects and ripped through their torsos.
There were eight more blasts, with the last one going off at around 10pm in the New Market area of the city.
Authorities were able to defuse ten bombs and are on the search for more.
The bombs were mostly targeted at restaurants and karaoke bars in a predominantly Buddhist section of the city, which was plunged in darkness for about an hour.
The Yala blasts came about 24 hours after two bombs exploded following a shooting attack in Narathiwat’s Muang district.
The first bomb was set off inside a convenience store in Narathiwat municipality at around 7pm, killing three people, including a pregnant woman and her threeyearold son.
The second bomb went off about hour an hour later outside a twostorey shophouse, about 400 metres away from the site of the first attack. The blast, which killed a shopkeeper and a teacher, also set other buildings in the area on fire. The explosion injured seven people, five of whom are Muslim.
A senior government officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said authorities believe that the attacks in Yala and Narathiwat had been carried out to mark the anniversary of the Tak Bai.
Of the 86 who died during the Tak Bai incident, 78 suffocated to death from being packed into military trucks after being arrested for demonstrating in front of the Tak Bai police station on October 25, 2004.
The incident is believed to have driven a big wedge between the state and the southernmost provinces, where about 90 per cent of the residents are Muslims, and also radicalised a generation of MalayMuslim insurgents bent on carving out a separate homeland.
