Six simultaneous motorcycle bombs killed at least three people and wounded more than 60 on a busy street in the southern Thai town of Hat Yai on Saturday, police said.
Attacks were expected this weekend in three Muslim provinces further south on the anniversary of the foundation of one of the separatist guerrilla groups there, but the bombs in Hat Yai took authorities by surprise.
Three people died and 68 were injured when three remote-controlled bombs hidden in motorcycles went off on the street of shops and hotels, Major General Virayut Sitimalik of the southern police told reporters.
Police identified the dead as a Thai man and woman and Jessie Lee Daniel, 35, from Canada. Three other bombs caused minor damage. Two Malaysians, one Singaporean and two Westerners were on the hospital lists of injured, local television reported.
Hat Yai switched off its mobile telephone network, apparently fearing other bombs might have been planted which could be set off by remote control, a method often used by militants in the far south. Ambulance sirens wailed as they rushed the wounded to hospital as smoke billowed up from the sealed-off brightly lit street.
Fire-fighters hosed down a burning taxi. Hat Yai is on a major rail junction and is popular with tourists from nearby Malaysia for weekend getaways. "After the explosions, Thai and Malaysian tourists were running for cover and screaming," witness Att Suwanjunee told ITV television.
"It was unusually busy tonight because many Malaysian tourists came during their national day holidays." The bombs came as authorities tightened security for possible attacks in the three Muslim southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala, where more than 1,700 people have been killed in separatist violence since Jan. 2004.
"We didn't anticipate the attacks to happen in Hat Yai," Southern Army Commander Ongkorn Thongprasom told ITV. A bomb at Hat Yai airport which killed one person last year was one of very few attacks outside the three far south provinces, where most are Muslim and speak a Malay dialect.
The largely Buddhist Bangkok government has tried various means from brute force to throwing development money at the three southern provinces, but nothing seemed to work so far.