Pattani explosion kills one, injures 25 in southern Thailand

Sep 3, 2009, 10:07 GMT

   Pattani, Thailand - A bomb went off Thursday outside a crowded restaurant in Thailand's violence-wracked city of Pattani, killing a 69-year-old man and injuring 25 other people, officials said.

   Two bombs planted in parked motorcycles went off simultaneously in Thai-Buddhist neighbourhoods of Pattani, 670 kilometres south of Bangkok, but only one claimed casualties.

   'We had been warned by military intelligence that an attack was pending,' Pattani Governor Thirathet Siyaphan said. 'No matter what measures we take the insurgents seem to elude us,' he said.

 An estimated 3,500 people have died in clashes, bombings, revenge killings and beheadings in Thailand's deep South - comprising Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces - since Muslim militants raided an army depot in January 2004, killing four soldiers and making off with 300 weapons, leading to an escalation of the region's separatist struggle.

   About 80 per cent of the region's 2 million people are Muslims. Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who lived in the region, about 70,000 have left their homes over the past five-and-a-half years.

   Although the region, which centuries ago was the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani, was conquered by Bangkok about 200 years ago, it has never wholly submitted to Thai rule.

   Analysts said the region's Muslim population, the majority of whom speak a Malay dialect and follow Malay customs, feels alienated from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state.