Bomb blasst in Thailand

Suspected insurgents killed three people, including a toddler, and wounded at least 34 Tuesday in a grenade, gun and car bomb attack on two restaurants and a hotel in Thailand's south, police said.The brutal violence brings the death toll over the past two days to four and the number of casualties to more than 50 as a result of militant attacks in the troubled Thai south, which is gripped by a bitter five-year uprising.The rebels, travelling by car and on three motorcycles, hurled a hand grenade into a restaurant at Monday lunchtime in Sungai Kolok, a border town in Narathiwat province, wounding four people.They then opened fire on customers, shooting dead a Buddhist police officer and injuring another four people, police said. A three-year-old boy who suffered gunshot wounds later died at hospital.The gunmen then began shooting at another nearby restaurant, killing the owner, a 45-year-old Buddhist woman, and wounding four people.A car bomb exploded in front of one of the town's hotels soon afterwards, wounding 23 people, police said.Colonel Parinya Chaidilok, an army spokesman, said the explosive weighed 30 to 50 kilograms (66 pounds to 110 pounds) and was hidden in a Honda Civic with a fake licence plate, which had passed a screening by a bomb detection machine."The bomb was hidden in the passenger car and detonated by radio signal," he told AFP, adding that two of the wounded were in a serious condition.On Monday evening, an explosive hidden in a motorcycle went off in Pattani province close to where Buddhists were attending a festival, wounding 17 -- five of them seriously, police said.Earlier in the day, four gunmen on two motorcycles opened fire on a 34-year-old Muslim rubber worker as he travelled to work in Narathiwat province. Officers said he died at the scene.The bloody rebellion has claimed more than 3,900 lives since it erupted in Thailand's Muslim-majority southern provinces, bordering Malaysia, in January 2004.The shadowy rebels, who have never publicly stated their goals, target Muslims and Buddhists alike and both civilians and members of the security forces, usually with shootings and bombings.Monday's attacks echoed a serious blast in August, which ripped through a restaurant in Narathiwat packed with government officials, wounding at least 42 people.Tensions have simmered since the region, formerly an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate, was annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand in 1902.