One Day After Ambush, Thailand Bombing Wounds 39
By Associated Press | January 16, 2008
YALA, Thailand — Suspected Islamists bombed a busy market in southern Thailand yesterday, wounding more than three dozen civilians a day after a rebel ambush killed eight soldiers.
The attacks came as the separatist rebellion entered its fifth year and as Thailand prepared to bring in a new government.
Also yesterday, the Cabinet renewed an emergency decree that gives security forces special powers of arrest in three southernmost provinces, a government spokesman, Chaiya Yimwilai, said. The insurgency in mostly Buddhist Thailand's Muslim-majority deep south has taken the lives of more than 2,800 people since flaring in January 2004. Little progress has been made in curbing the violence despite nearly 40,000 police and soldiers in the region.
