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Bomb explosion in Thai south leaves two dead

Suspected Islamic separatists detonated a bomb in southern Thailand yesterday, killing two police officers and wounding three other people, just hours after the country's revered queen appealed to the nation to condemn such attacks.

The device, believed to have been triggered by a mobile phone, exploded in a small storehouse used by a village chief in the Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat province and caused damage in a 30m radius, said police Lieutenant Sittidej Ruansong.

Two police officers were killed, while another officer and two villagers were wounded in the blast near a border police station and a market along the Malaysian frontier, he said.

The attack came after Thailand's revered Queen Sirikit delivered a televised address late Saturday calling on the public to unite against the ongoing violence in the southernmost provinces -- the only Muslim-dominated areas of this largely Buddhist country.

"We have to condemn such actions as being totally devoid of humanity," the queen was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post. "We have to let these brutes know -- without taking arms -- what we feel."

The queen said she was especially shocked by a recent string of bombings at an international airport, a superstore and a hotel in the southern city of Hat Yai. Two people were killed and more than 70 others wounded in the April 3 blasts.

She expressed concern that the unrest could be economically devastating for Thailand as it could scare away tourists who provide important revenue for the country, according to the report.

Yesterday's attack coincided with a trip to the region by members of the National Reconciliation Commission, a government-appointed panel led by former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun that has been tasked with finding ways of lessening the violence.

The commission is scheduled to release reports later yesterday on bloody clashes between Thai security forces and suspected militants at Krue Se, a centuries-old mosque, and Narathiwat's Tak Bai district last year, according to the Thai News Agency.

About 800 people have been slain in an upsurge of violence in Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani provinces since January last year. Officials have generally blamed the unrest on a resurgent separatist movement thought to have faded away in the 1980s.

The Hat Yai bombings in neighboring Songkhla province raised fears that the insurgents were expanding their field of operations northward.

Southern Thai Muslims have long complained of unfair treatment by the central government, particularly in employment and education.
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