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BANGKOK : Thailand has felt 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.
"The perpetrators were the offspring of those (suspected separatist militants) with outstanding arrest warrants and their aim was to put pressure on the government," he told reporters in Bangkok.
Narathiwat governor Pracha Taerat said the pickup was laden with about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives and was detonated outside the Marina Hotel in an area crowded with open-air beer bars.
He said the scale of the explosion and the methods used by the assailants marked a worrying new twist in the violence.
"We did not expect this kind of car bomb. It is unprecedented in Thailand," the governor said in a televised interview late Thursday.
All the dead are believed to be Thai, though police said they had officially confirmed the identity of only two victims.
The area, a scene of devastation after the blast, was cordoned off as forensic officers continued Friday to pore over the site to collect evidence, police said.
Television footage showed fires raging on the road outside the hotel moments after the explosion. A power cut had blacked out the area, and glass and debris was strewn across the road more than a block away as the wounded were laid into the backs of pickups for transport to hospital.
Four cars, five motorcycles and a number of nearby shops, restaurants and bars were destroyed by the bomb, while the Marina Hotel, where a wedding party had gathered on the third floor at the time of the explosion, suffered considerable damage.
Sungai Kolok, along the Malaysian border, has a thriving nightlife district routinely visited by scores of Thai and Malaysian tourists. It has been the scene of three other major blasts since last March.
Thaksin had not visited Sungai Kolok on his trip but he had spent time the previous day in several spots in Narathiwat, one of three provinces that have endured the brunt of the separatist unrest.
A small bomb exploded meanwhile Friday in neighbouring Yala province, slightly injuring two soldiers assigned to provide protection for teachers fearful of attacks, police told AFP. - AFP
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