Bombs explode in Bangkok on New Year's Eve, 25 injured


dpa German Press Agency
Published: Sunday December 31, 2006

Bangkok- Bangkok's New Year's Eve celebrations were
disrupted Sunday by six bombs exploding in the capital that injured
at least 25 people, two of them seriously, and forced municipal
authorities to cancel their countdown plans.
Bombs went off early evening about 6 p.m. (1100 GMT) at busy
Victory Monument, near the popular Weekend Market, at the sprawling
Klong Toey wet market, a police traffic box at Sukhumwit Soi 62,
behind the Seacon Square shopping mall in Eastern Bangkok and at a
Tesco supermarket.

Two bombs went off at Victory Monument, a busy bus stop in the
capital, injuring 17 people, one of whom was listed in serious
condition.

Another bomb was detonated at a crowded Klong Toey market,
injuring seven people, one of them a 10-year-old girl, and a 61-
year-old man.

"There was no warning. It is quite shocking," said Major-General
Anand Srisiran, chief of Metropolitan Police District Five.

Police Bureau spokesman General Achilawat Suwannaphaesat denied
reports that two or three people had died in the explosions, although
it was not clear whether they had died later in hospital.

Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin cancelled the Thai capital's
New Year's Eve countdown at the Central World shopping complex and
city police advised Bangkok's citizenry to stay at home and avoid New
Year's parties as more bombs may be in the works.

Witnesses told police that they saw people throwing what looked to
be grenades shortly before the explosions.

Initial speculation was that the bombs were either the work of
Muslim rebels from Thailand's troubled deep south or of groups
opposed to the current military-installed government.

"It's still not clear, although of course it might be southern
militants as it is known that individuals from some groups have come
to Bangkok to survey targets, and some have been arrested," said
Panithan Wathanayakorn, a political scientist at Bangkok's
prestigious Chulalongkorn University.

Panithan, a leading expert of the deep South and the military,
said that setting off bombs in Bangkok would mark a major shift in
the separatists' strategy.

In the past they had limited themselves to acts of violence in
Thailand's three southernmost provinces - Narathiwat, Pattani and
Yala - where they are waging a struggle for independence from the
Bangkok-centric predominantly Buddhist Thai state.

He added that the bombs, based on initial intelligence reports,
seemed different from those usually used in the deep South.

A second theory is that the explosions were perpetrated by the
same political forces that have burned numerous schools in north and
north-eastern Thailand in recent months in an apparent response to
the military's coup of September 19 that ousted former prime minister
Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thailand's military-installed Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont has
recently set up a committee to investigate these politically-
motivated groups and arrests are expected in the coming weeks, said
Panithan, who still did not rule out the possibility that the
bombings were the work of southern separatist.

Police have been warning for some time that their intelligence
sources have told them the insurgents might strike in Bangkok over
the holiday period.

Until now however, despite years of carnage, the southern
terrorists have made few attempts to operate outside their three
Muslim-majority provinces next to the border with Malaysia.

Thailand is undergoing a difficult return to democratic government
after the popular, but allegedly corrupt, former premier Thaksin was
ousted by the military. Thaksin, a billionaire businessman who held
the premiership between 2001 and 2006, is in exile.

Several powerful groups, including the supporters of Thaksin, are
unhappy over what they see as the military's high-handed action and
the ongoing investigations into allegedly corrupt deals perpetrated
by Thaksin's family and political associates.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency