Chalee, a reporter with the country’s biggest Thai-language
daily, was killed while covering an explosion in restive southern
according to local and international news reports.
Chalee was killed by a car bomb that apparently targeted
people arriving at the scene of a blast that occurred minutes earlier in the
town of
on the Malaysian border, according to local and international news reports. At
least 30 people were injured in the second explosion, which occurred 20 minutes
after a smaller motorcycle bombing that left no casualties, according to The
Associated Press. The attacks, attributed to local insurgents in a region rife
with separatist violence, occurred outside a restaurant near the local police
station, news reports said.
A reporter with Channel 9, Phadung Wannalak, was seriously
injured in the blast. A rescue worker also died of his wounds, the reports
said.
Many in
predominantly Muslim southern provinces share an ethnicity and cultural
heritage with neighboring Malays, unlike the country’s Buddhist majority. A
long-simmering separatist movement gained momentum in early 2004, leading to
almost daily acts of violence, according to published reports.