Bombs hit southern Thai city, eight wounded

BANGKOK, May 27 (Reuters) Four small bombs wounded at least eight people in the southern Thai city of Hai Yai today in an attack resembling ones carried out by Muslim separatists, police said.

One of the wounded was in serious condition after the bombs hit a department store, a hotel, a restaurant and a pharmacy in the city, the centre of the rubber trade in Thailand, the world's biggest producer, they said.

No further details were immediately available, they said.

Muslim insurgents have hit several cities in the far south, an independent sultanate until annexed by overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand a century ago, with a series of small bombs designed to cause chaos rather than mass deaths.

More than 2,100 people have been killed in the latest insurgency in the region, where most people speak a Malay dialect, since it erupted in January 2004.

The latest was a soldier killed in an ambush in Yala province this morning. Four of his colleagues were wounded in a firefight with insurgents who ambushed their patrol, police said.

REUTERS RN RK2142