BOMBING IN THAI MUSLIM SOUTH KILLS ONE GIRL AND INJURES SEVEN OTHERS

Thai soldiers walk past Muslim students while checking security at a classroom in Pattani Province, southern Thailand. (Images: Chiangrai Times) — **Thai soldiers walk past Muslim students while checking security at a classroom in Pattani Province, southern Thailand**. (Photo: Chiangrai Times)

Pattani, 1 Shawwal 1435/28 July 2014 (MINA) – Thailand’s Muslim south began the Eid holiday tragically when a roadside bomb killed a 12-year-old girl and injured seven others.

Police General Panya Karavanant told the Anadolu Agency on Monday that rangers had been carrying out patrols when ten kilograms of explosives that were buried into the road exploded in Pattani province late Sunday.

The bombing instantly killed Atima Seh-Jeh while also injuring two other girls and two army rangers, who are thought to have been the target, Anadolu Agency quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

Previous, a car bomb exploded on Friday outside a hotel in insurgency-wracked southern Thailand, killing three people and wounding 36 others, Chiangrai Times report.

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There was no immediate claim of responsibility but suspicion was likely to fall on Muslim insurgents waging a decade-long campaign against the Thai state.

Thailand’s three Muslim-dominated southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat have been wracked by a sectarian insurgency since Siam (the name of Thailand pre-1939) took control of what was then a Malay Sultanate following an Anglo-Siamese treaty in 1909.

The insurgency became a full-blown civil war in the 1960s when the Bangkok government tried to control education in the region’s Islamic schools.

In January 2004, a rejuvenated movement launched a series of attacks that shook up the Thai State. Since then bomb attacks, drive-by shootings and ambushes have happened on an almost daily basis; almost 6,000 people – Buddhists and Muslims, military, teachers, civil servants and civilians – killed and 10,700 others wounded.

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The atmosphere has also become more volatile after the Thai junta – which seized power on May 22 – overhauled the region’s administrative structure, putting the main civilian agency managing the region – the Southern Border Provincial Administrative Center – under military control. (T/P09/E01)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)