National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Chaiyapruek Duangprapat said today that the NSC will ensure that the unrest in the Deep South will not spread beyond the restive region.
He explained that the bombings in Satun province on Sunday night and Monday morning took place on one section of the road between Songkhla and Satun which did not have security checkpoints, allowing insurgents to take advantage of the weakness to stage the attacks.
Three students in a passenger van were slightly injured when the vehicle was hit by a bomb blast targeting a roadside utility pole.
The NSC chief noted that the incidents would not have happened had members of the public cooperated with the authorities and acted as their eyes and ears to alert them to any suspicious activities.
He stated that the security forces are ready to provide protection to people who provide information to the authorities.
Insurgent groups also launched a coordinated wave of bomb and arson attacks in Yala, Songkhla and Satun provinces on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Gen Chaiyapruek said the insurgent groups wanted to show that they have the capacity to operate outside the traditional restive region, injuring innocent students in the process and urged the public to condemn the insurgents.
Analysts said that the wave of violence on November 10 and 11 should be separated into two parts. The first is the attacks on eight targets in Yala province. Security officers believe they were linked to the killing of a key insurgent in Than To district, Yala province, two days earlier, in particular the attack on a sub-district office in which security guards were tied up and five official cars were torched. The attackers escaped but burned car tyres and scattered spikes on the escape route to prevent road hot pursuit by the officials.
For the attacks in Satun province, analysts say the type of explosive device used was similar to the three devices used to attack a shopping mall in Pattani in August, noting that it is highly possible that the insurgents intended to kill or maim people in Thung Wa district of Satun because the explosive device contained shrapnel and was timed to detonate during rush hour.
Many questions remain, such as why insurgents targeted Satun, which had been peaceful for many years, and three districts of Songkhla that were rarely affected.
Looking back, analysts said that insurgency-related incidents have taken place outside the restive provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and some parts of Songkhla before.
Seven years ago, bombs exploded in Bangkok and seven southern provinces, particularly on the Andaman coast. In June last year, a Pattani native and their associates were caught with explosive materials and bomb-making equipment in Phang-nga. An investigation subsequently led to the seizure of 15 explosive devices in Phang-nga, Krabi and Phuket.
These indicated that insurgent groups wanted to create unrest outside the Deep South, targeting economic and tourism zones.
The wave of violence on November 10 and 11 was timed to coincide with the visit of Malaysia’s newly appointed facilitator of peace talks between the Thai government and the BRN, which have been suspended since July last year.
The analysts noted that violence has often occurred whenever peace talks were about to resume, violence that was designed to increase the bargaining power of the insurgent groups. As long as a peace accord is not signed, the people in the restive region will continue to live with risks to their lives and without peace, according to the analysts.
