Alert for car bombs in the South

An alert has gone out about four missing vehicles in Hat Yai, because of fear they may be used in car-bomb attacks, Hat Yai police said yesterday.
Local residents have been urged to watch out for a black Honda Civic, a blue Isuzu pickup, a gold Isuzu pickup and a white Toyota Tiger pickup.
Hat Yai police, meanwhile, inspected local apartments looking for new arrivals or short-term tenants, who may be insurgents preparing for future attacks.
A message spread by journalists and later among Twitter users said there could be three other cars on the police watchlist, bringing the possible total to seven. Licence plate numbers were also provided.
A group of insurgents who are Yala locals has been identified as possibly behind the blasts in Yala on Saturday. Police yesterday released photos of Sahudin Tohjehma, a resident from Raman district sought for allegedly leading the group. Security sources said they had also detected links between the suspect and recent shootings of civilians by men dressed in police uniform.
Security camera footage shows one of the two bomb-laden cars parked at the scene, before the driver got out and was picked up by a man on a motorbike. Officials and police in Hat Yai are still reviewing the footage and have not released details about possible key assailants and accomplices.
A “safe zone” around Ruam Mit Street in Yala will be set up soon to allow vendors and small businesses to continue trading.
Police said one of the cars used to carry explosives in Hat Yai, another black Honda Civic, belonged to Thanasorn Kuasuk, a local politician in Narathiwat. It was stolen by gunmen after they shot him dead in an ambush last October.
Deputy Prime Minister Yutthasak Sasiprapha, speaking yesterday after a meeting of officials from agencies handling national security, said the attacks were prompted by effective suppression of illegal trade and
narcotics in the South. The drug-related link was confirmed by the spokesman of the Fourth Army Area, Colonel Pramote Phrom-in.
Security has been heightened in two other provinces in the deep South – Narathiwat and Pattani – where no bombs have been set off in recent days.
The minister said the blasts in Hat Yai went off before 6pm, as foreign Muslim tourists would hit the streets after that.
Songkhla governor Krissada Boonraj admitted security officials were at fault for the bomb attack at the Lee Gardens Hotel and apologised for failing to provide adequate security. New security plans were being worked out to cope with heightened risk, he said.
Two people of the three killed in Hat Yai were a married couple – Malaysian Low Tsian Hock and Thai wife Suphaphorn Janchaiyaphum, Hat Yai police said.
A large number of Malaysian tourists are lodging complaints
with police, to use the complaint paper as evidence to get a temporary pass to return to their home country, as luggage and travel documents were in the Lee Gardens Hotel, which has been closed for entry pending security inspections.
The watch at border checkpoints has also been boosted to look for suspicious individuals. A Liberian woman with a 14-year-old son was detained at a checkpoint in Songkhla after the boy was found to have entered Thailand illegally.
National police chief Priewpan Damapong, spoke after inspecting the Lee Gardens Hotel yesterday. He said the explosion at the hotel was a car bomb, ending early speculation and that it was a different type of attack to bombs in Yala.
An independent analyst who asked not to be named – said the car laden with explosive was parked on level four of the hotel’s five-storey underground car park on purpose. He said the attackers wanted to use fuel in more than 100 cars to multiply the blast, to try to weaken the hotel’s structure and possibly cause it to collapse.
“This has been discussed among a small circle of people, and I don’t want to expand this theory further on, as it would benefit the insurgents, who want to basically terrorise anyway,” he said.