Bangkok, January 07: Three bombs exploded in southern Thailand, killing one security officer and wounding another, ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to the restive region on Thursday.
A roadside bomb went off in Yala province, killing a paramilitary ranger on patrol, said Lieutenant General Pichet Wisaijorn, a military commander in charge of the rubber-rich area plagued by a Muslim separatist insurgency.
Another small bomb went off earlier in Yala, about 200 metres (656 ft) from where Abhisit later presided over a ceremony to open a new road, Pichet said. A police officer in the security team for the visiting delegation was slightly wounded.
Another roadside bomb was detonated in neighbouring Pattani province, but no casualties were reported.
“We are in control of the situation. Small attacks are common during visits to get attention and publicity,” Pichet told reporters.
More than 1,000 security officers were deployed for the visit.
Violence in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat has killed more than 3,900 people, both Buddhists and Muslims, since 2004.
The latest bombings underline the government’s difficulty in imposing control over the volatile region, just a few hours by car from some of Thailand’s best-known tourist beaches.
A civil servant, a female defence volunteer and a mechanic were killed in drive-by shootings on Wednesday, while security forces shot dead a suspect who resisted arrest in a gunbattle that followed a search operation at a house in Narathiwat.
ECONOMIC BOOST
Abhisit presided over the opening of a new highway between Pattani and Yala. The existing two-lane road has been regularly hit by roadside bombs and vehicles are regularly ambushed.
Abhisit was scheduled to visit a housing and land development project, a base for paramilitary rangers and a fishing village.
A massive counterinsurgency effort has occasionally slowed the pace of the attacks in the south but has shown little sign of ending the violence.
Past and present Thai governments have snubbed calls to consider creating a politically autonomous zone.
Abhisit’s government has said it could look at a special economic zone for the region, once an independent Malay-Muslim sultanate annexed by Buddhist Thailand a century ago.
It has launched a five-year economic stimulus programme to develop the region, which attracts little private money and relies heavily on rubber, contributing 10 percent of output in Thailand, the world’s biggest producer and exporter.
In 2009 Narathiwat and Pattani had no private investment projects approved, while Yala had just one, valued at 70 million baht ($2.1 million), according to Board of Investment figures. In the country as a whole the board approved 905 projects valued at 260 billion baht.
—Agencies