They planted a string of bombs near entertainment venues. Now, what kind of “separatist rebels” would do that? Well, Colonel Prabphan Meemongkon tells us in paragraph 3 that they are “militants.” In paragraph 4 we find out that this happened in a “Muslim-majority region,” and in paragraph 9 we learn that the Thai South was previously “an ethnic Malay sultanate.”
Could this be an Islamic jihad, based on the Islamic principle that “Islam must dominate, and not be dominated,” and that Muslims must not, when they have the strength to overturn it, accept rule by the kuffar? Only an attentive and informed reader might come to that understanding from this AFP story, which is typical of coverage of the Thai jihad (except that it doesn’t use the word “restive”). It’s just a separatist uprising, you see. Why Muslims in Thailand would want to separate from the rest of Thailand is unexplained — that’s irrelevant. It’s just a separatist uprising. Move along.
“One killed, dozens injured in bombings in Thai south: police,” from AFP (thanks to Anne Crockett):
NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) “” A string of bombs planted by suspected separatist rebels rocked Thailand’s troubled south Monday, killing one person and injuring dozens near the Malaysian border, police said.
Explosives planted at entertainment venues across Sun Ngai Kolok town in Narathiwat province wounded 27 people in the early hours of Monday, two of them seriously, police said.
“It was likely done by militants who target innocent people during new year,” local police chief Colonel Prabphan Meemongkon told AFP.
He said police managed to defuse one bomb at a hotel in the Muslim-majority region, where rebels are waging a bloody battle for a separate state, but five devices struck two other hotels nearby.
The first blasts hit at about 12:40 am Monday (1740 GMT Sunday), sending people fleeing into a hotel car park, where another bomb was hidden.
A police officer in Narathiwat said that explosives had been packed into cigarette packets, which were planted inside a hotel disco.
Another blast hit a hotel karaoke bar, he said.
Later in nearby Yala province, one person was killed and four were injured when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded outside a restaurant, police said.
More than 2,800 people have been killed in four years of separatist unrest in Thailand’s south, an ethnic Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension….