Car bomb kills one, injures 10 in southern Thailand

Sep 4, 2009, 5:00 GMT

   Pattani, Thailand - A car bomb exploded Friday outside a crowded restaurant in southern Thailand's violence-racked city of Yala, killing one policeman and wounding 10 people, police said.

   The bomb went off in the morning when the restaurant was packed with customers, including policemen and militia.

   'They used a walkie-talkie to detonate the bomb, which is a new method that is more popular in Afghanistan and Iraq,' said Yala's police chief, Major General Sayan Krasaesaen. In the past, Muslim separatists used mobile phones to detonate bombs in southern Thailand.

   It was the latest of several car bombings in Thailand's deep South on restaurants frequented by Buddhists. On Thursday, a bomb planted in a motorcycle went off outside a restaurant in Pattani, killing one person and wounding 29.

   On August 25, a bomb exploded outside another restaurant in Pattani, 670 kilometres south of Bangkok, injuring 26 civilians.

   'The insurgents are targeting restaurants frequented by Thai Buddhists in an effort to drive them out of the region,' Sayan 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.