More blasts in Thai south, Indonesian arrested

Yala (Thailand), Jun 16: An Indonesian was detained with bomb-making equipment in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south today as another rash of small explosions wounded at least five people there, police said.

The man, identified by police as Sabri bin Emaeruding, 37, from Sumatra, was held in a dawn raid in the region, where more than 1,300 people have been killed in two years of separatist insurgency.

Emaeruding had 1 kg of urea fertiliser and 2 kg of nails commonly used in making bombs and was charged with entering the country illegally. He would be detained for further questioning, police said.

A small bomb hidden under a truck exploded today near a teashop in the southern Yala province, wounding the driver, his wife and three other people, police said.

Small bombs also exploded in toilets at five train stations in the three provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat near the Malaysian border where the separatist insurgency has been concentrated, but noone was hurt, police said.

The blasts in the Malay-speaking region came a day after a wave of bombings which Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said security forces knew was coming but failed to prevent. At least two people were killed and 16 wounded in those attacks.

Police said the Indonesian man was caught during a hunt for suspected militants behind the rash of at least 41 bombs which exploded yesterday.

''Under current circumstances, we need to detain him under the emergency law and find out if he is part of an Indonesian rebel network in Aceh or elsewhere,'' Police Colonel Manoch Ananritkul told Reuters by telephone.

He was referring to the Sumatra province of Aceh, where rebels and the government made peace last year and spoke a day after Abu Bakar Bashir, reputed Indonesian spiritual leader of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network, was freed from jail.

Narathiwat Governor Pracha Taerat told Reuters yesterday more than 200 small bombs the size of a soda can with a digital wrist watch as a timer, were smuggled from Malaysia in the past week.

He said the bombs were easily smuggled in the region of 1.8 million people, most of them ethnic Malays who feel more connected to Malaysia than predominantly Buddhist Thailand.

REUTERS

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