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| Saturday, 19 February 2005 |
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Thailand on edge after unprecedented car bomb BANGKOK, Friday (AFP) - Thailand grappled Friday with an alarming escalation of violence in the Muslim-majority south marked by an unprecedented car bomb that killed six people just hours after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had left the region. The bomb also left 44 people injured, including up to five critically, when it detonated Thursday night inside a pickup truck parked next to a busy hotel in Sungai Kolok, a town on the Malaysian border. "One of the injured died this morning at Sungai Kolok hospital," taking the toll to six, a police officer in the town told AFP. The attack was the deadliest single bombing in a campaign of violence that has gripped the Muslim-dominated deep south for the past 13 months and claimed about 600 lives. It came just hours after Thaksin cut short a visit to the region during which he unveiled a highly controversial plan to block state funding for more than 350 "red zone" villages deemed to be prone to violence and sympathetic to separatists. Most of the red villages are in Narathiwat, the province where the blast occurred. Thaksin said it was unlikely that foreign terrorist elements were involved in the attack but admitted it was aimed at putting pressure on his administration. |
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