'Rampaging Thai Muslims target transmitters'

Security forces in Thailand are today investigating whether Muslim insurgents targeted mobile-phone transmitters in Thailand’s turbulent south in response to government efforts to block them from using mobile phones to detonate bombs.

In a rampage of violence, suspected Muslim militants yesterday burned more than 40 mobile-phone transmissions stations and antennae in four provinces of southern Thailand, an area bordering Malaysia that is wracked by a Muslim insurgency.

The attacks came amid increased efforts by the Thai government to stop militants from detonating bombs in Thailand by mobile phone from across the border.

Officials have required all Thai users of mobile phones register their SIM cards and are seeking cooperation from neighbouring Malaysia to block transmissions from across the border.

“It is possible that they are angry about government measures to block them from using roaming signals to trigger bombs,” said Colonel Somkuan Saengpatraneth, spokesman for regional army headquarters.

He said security forces and telephone companies were investigating the attacks, which occurred in Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and Songkhla provinces.

Mobile-phone services in some districts were shut down by the attacks, which appeared to target sites belonging to DTAC, the country’s second-largest service provider, officials said.

At least 24 transmission sites in six districts of Yala province were set on fire, said the province’s governor, Boonyasith Suwanarat.

The governor of Narathiwat province, Pracha Tehrat, said at least seven sites there were attacked after he had received information that insurgents would try to “create chaos”.

In Pattani, seven sites were attacked but the damage was minimal, said police Major Somjit Nasomyon.

In Songkhla, which is adjacent to the three southernmost provinces and has been spared most of the recent violence, at least four sites were set on fire, police said.

Authorities were investigating a mobile telephone SIM card found yesterday at a bombed site in Yala to determine if a phone was used to trigger the blast.

Earlier yesterday, suspected Muslim separatists fatally shot a police officer, while a bomb wounded three soldiers and a teacher in separate attacks, police said.

More than 1,200 people have died in the past two years in sectarian violence that officials blame on Islamic separatists in Thailand’s southernmost, Muslim-dominated provinces. Government efforts to curb the insurgency have been largely unsuccessful.