Daily Times

BANGKOK: It happens with horrifying frequency in southern Thailand, a country much of the world associates with pristine beaches and alluring, sapphire blue seas: a bomb goes off. Victims are maimed or killed. Security forces comb through blood-spattered wreckage and debris.

On Thursday and Friday, 11 more bombs rattled seven Thai provinces, killing four people and wounding dozens more. But this time was different: the targets were not in the country’s three southernmost provinces, where a bitter war waged by Muslim separatists has flared for more than a decade.

Instead, they shook towns filled with tourists further north, places like Hua Hin, where 11 foreigners were injured, most by a small explosive device that detonated in a narrow alley filled with bars, restaurants and massage parlors.

Ethnic Malay insurgents launched their armed bid for greater autonomy in Thailand’s so-called “deep south” in 2004. But more than 6,700 dead and 12,000 wounded later, the struggle seems more forgotten than ever — a reality illustrated by a flood of weekend media coverage that dwarfed the usual trickle of reporting about the far-southern conflict.

“Sadly, people get used to violence. The media gets bored with it. The story becomes mundane,” said Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, an independent analyst and expert on the insurgency.

If it turns out insurgents were responsible for last week’s bombings, it would mark a dangerous new expansion of the low-level war that has plagued the mostly Buddhist country’s southern border region with Malaysia.

It could also prove a dangerous incentive to carry out more violence.

With few exceptions, the militants have so far avoided attacking known tourist destinations because “they didn’t want to be seen as a terrorist group,” Rungrawee said. “But that could change if attacks like this prove effective” by attracting more attention to the war or pushing the government to make concessions at peace talks, she said.

While there has been no claim of responsibility and authorities have yet to blame any specific group, police investigators and analysts say the latest violence bears striking similarities to the methods used by the separatist militants who have traditionally limited operations to the Muslim-dominated provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat.

The attacks Thursday and Friday took place in seven locations south of Bangkok, including the island of Phuket. The bombs were small and appeared designed to shock rather than induce mass casualties, and left no immediate major impact on Thailand’s lucrative tourist industry.

Asked Monday about the possibility that insurgents orchestrated the latest violence, police commissioner Chakthip Chaijinda reiterated words spoken by other top officials over the weekend, saying “there are similarities in bomb-making methods and the equipment.”

Authorities say some of the homemade bombs were triggered remotely by cellphones — a tactic used by insurgents. Some of the phones, recovered by police, were reportedly purchased in Malaysia, into which Thai militants are known to cross with ease.

Malaysian police chief Khalif Abu Bakar confirmed Thai authorities have reached out, and officials on his side of the border were searching for those who purchased and sold the phones.

The war in the south flared 12 years ago after security forces shot dead seven Thai Muslims during an anti-government protest in Tak Bai in Narathiwat province, and hauled away 78 others packed so tightly they died of asphyxiation.