Bombs hit southern Thai city, nine wounded

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

Army-commander-in-chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin declined to say immediately if separatists were responsible for the attacks, but said the bombs, all the size of soda cans, were aimed at causing chaos rather than major damage.

''The bombs weren't meant to destroy or sabotage, but just to wreak havoc,'' Sonthi, the leader of the bloodless coup which ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra last year, told TITV television.

One of the wounded was in serious condition after the bombs hit two department stores, two hotels, a restaurant, a Chinese shrine and a pharmacy in the city, the centre of the rubber trade in Thailand, the world's biggest producer, police 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 on Sunday morning. Four of his colleagues were wounded in a firefight with insurgents who ambushed their patrol, police said.

REUTERS SLD BST2200