Thai police picked through the wreckage for clues yesterday after a string of bombs tore apart a popular tourist area, killing four people and wounding dozens in troubled southern Thailand.
The six simultaneous blasts ripped through Saturday night crowds in bars and cafes in Hat Yai, the main tourist hub in the southern region that has been gripped by an Islamic insurgency which has killed more than 1,400 people.
A 25-year-old Canadian teacher was among the latest dead, becoming the first Westerner to die in Thailand's Islamic insurgency, according to health ministry officials in Hat Yai.
He was identified by health officials as Jesse Lee Daniel and had taught English at the city's Phol Vidaya school.
Two Thai women and a Thai man were also killed, officials said.
One of the dead women was mistakenly identified by medical staff as a Chinese tourist but turned out later to be an ethnic minority from Chiang Mai, hospital officials said.
Health Minister Pinit Jarusombat said that 14 other foreigners were among the 72 wounded, and included six Malaysians, three Singaporeans, three Britons, an Indian and an American.
Paitoon Pattanasophon, police chief in Songkhla Province, where Hat Yai is located, said that police were holding emergency meetings as the hunt for suspects got underway. No arrests had been made by late yesterday.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has ordered his deputies to work closely with police and military, his secretary said.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Prasit Paochoo said two explosive devices were planted inside motorcycles and detonated with a mobile phone.
The other four were planted near the entrances of two department stores and a hotel frequented by foreigners, he said, adding that police were still unsure what kind of bombs they were.
As dawn broke in the city, crowds of shocked onlookers gathered amid the wreckage.
Walls were studded with shrapnel at the bomb sites, which were covered with debris and pools of blood.
"I heard the blast and I live a kilometer away," said one bystander as others stood numbly on the edges of devastated restaurants.
Several charred vehicles lay in the road where they had burned the night before.
Outside the Brown Sugar Bar and Cafe an Australian visitor still wearing his hospital gown stood staring at the wreckage of where he was drinking the night before.
"I feel really lucky today," said the distraught man, who did not give his name, adding that doctors had removed shrapnel from his shoulder and his girlfriend suffered multiple fractures to her leg.
Soon after the blasts, nearly 1,000 foreign and Thai tourists staying in hotels along Hat Yai's main road were evacuated, the English-language Nation newspaper reported.
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