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YALA, Thailand : At least 11 people were wounded by a bomb at a busy market in Thailand's restive Muslim-majority south Thursday but a second device was defused, police said.
The attack came as mainly Buddhist Thailand was on high alert against possible terror attacks during the five-day Buddhist New Year holiday, which begins on Friday.
The bomb, hidden under a market stall, was set off by a mobile phone in Yala, one of three insurgency-hit southern provinces bordering Malaysia, police said.
Another bomb was discovered at a public phone booth near the market but police defused the device.
Yala has suffered the brunt of a recent escalation in attacks by a shadowy Islamic insurgency, which never claims responsibility for the violence.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in three years of unrest in the south.
Since a September coup, Thailand's military-installed government has launched a raft of peace measures, only to see the attacks escalate in the past six months.
On Wednesday, a 26-year-old Buddhist woman was shot in Yala and her body burned beyond recognition in an attack blamed on Islamic rebels, triggering public outrage against the government's botched handling of the unrest.
Some 200 Buddhists paraded the charred remains of the woman through the streets of Yala in a graphic protest.
They wrapped her body in a white cloth and placed it at the staircase of a government building where General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the head of the Thai junta, was meeting local leaders.
The crowd swelled to 400 people and held an all-night vigil beside her body in front of the building.
Sonthi met with the protesters and told them the government was doing its utmost to reduce the violence, but the crowd Thursday demanded another meeting with him or army-backed Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont.
They urged the government to provide security for the region's minority Buddhists. - AFP/ch
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