Thailand Struck By Numerous Bombs

Bomb blast rocks Thailand

Bomb Blast Rocks Thailand

Thailand’s south, was struck with more than twenty homemade explosives, with report from the army claiming that the bombs were detonated by Muslim insurgents.

A 14 year ethnic fight between Malay militants and the Thai state in the Buddhist kingdom’s southern border has led to nothing less than 7,000 deaths.

On Sunday, suspected rebels launched their most sweeping attack in recent months, striking 14 ATM booths, two electricity poles and other public spaces and security posts.

No one was killed by the blasts, which went off across the four Muslim majority provinces bordering Malaysia, but the coordinated offensive marked a brazen challenge to the ruling junta’s efforts at peace negotiations.

“They always look for a way to create chaos and inconvenience,” army spokesman Colonel Pramote Prom-in said of the insurgents.

“This time they went after the easy targets,” he added.

Pramote, while asked on whether the violence would effect the junta’s ongoing talks with a group that claims to represent the rebels, brush aside the question.

The military recently said the two sides had made progress in designating a “safe zone” in one district of the insurgency-roiled region.

But analysts have long doubted that the rebel interlocutors have genuine sway over fighters on the ground.

“It’s (the rebels’) way of reminding the Thai security apparatus that they have the will and capacity to discredit them,” Don Pathan, a Thailand-based independent analyst, told Nigeria News.

“And a reminder that they are not part of the so-called peace process,” he added.

It remains unclear how a change of guard in Malaysia, where elections brought a new government to power earlier this month, will affect the negotiations that have been facilitated by Kuala Lumpur.

The culturally distinct “Deep South” was annexed by Thailand more than 100 years ago and has incubated waves of secessionist bloodshed.

The latest flare-up reignited in 2004, with violence playing out far from Thailand’s tourist destinations and garnering little international attention.