KUALA LUMPUR: Fear continues to Southeast Asia after a deadly attack in Thailand's south killed 14 people on Saturday and injured hundreds more when car bombs ripped through a high-rise hotel frequented by foreign tourists. More than 5,000 people have been killed in Thailand's three southernmost provinces — Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala — since an Islamist insurgency flared in January 2004. “This is the worst attack in the past few years,” said Col. Pramote Promin, deputy spokesman of a regional security agency. “The suspected insurgents were targeting people's lives. They (chose) a bustling commercial area, so they wanted to harm people.” Although more attacks in recent years have been small scale, this later violence has left many, including Malaysians fearful that the future of their traveling could be in jeopardy. “We definitely wanted to go to Thailand and the south, and had even booked tickets, but right now I don't know because people are being killed,” one Malaysian man told Bikyamasr.com on Sunday morning. At least one Malaysian citizen was killed in the explosions, which have rocked Southeast Asia to its core, with fears that attacks in the region could be back on the rise. Most attacks are small-scale bombings or drive-by shootings that target soldiers, police and symbols of authority, but suspected insurgents have also staged large attacks in commercial areas. A blast also occurred Saturday at a high-rise hotel in the city of Hat Yai, in the nearby province of Songkhla. Officials had initially attributed that blast to a gas leak, saying it was unrelated to the attacks blamed on insurgents. But after inspecting the hotel's underground parking lot, authorities found a severely damaged sedan and a hole created by the explosion's impact. The midday explosion at the 405-room Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel, where throngs of Malaysian and Singaporean tourists spend their weekends, killed three people and caused about 230 injuries, mostly from smoke inhalation, said police Lt. Puwadon Wiriyawarangkun. Regional police chief Lt. Gen. Jakthip Chaijinda said the Hat Yai incident “is likely related to what happened in Yala and might have been plotted by the same group of insurgents.” Police said the blast that occurred at the underground level of the hotel ripped the building's cooking gas pipeline, causing a fire that sent smoke spiraling into the upper floors and trapping many people in their rooms until rescuers came. One of the fatalities was identified as a Malaysian tourist. A McDonald's restaurant on the hotel's ground floor appeared to have suffered heavy damage from the blast. The hotel was also targeted in 2006, when four people, including a Canadian man, were killed by six bombs that had been planted on Hat Yai's main street. Hat Yai and the rest of Songkhla province have generally been spared the violence that has wracked Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/PNv7o Tags: Bombing, Fear, featured, Malaysia, Thailand Section: Human Rights, Latest News, Southeast Asia, Travel
