BANGKOK, Sept 16: Three bombs exploding simultaneously ripped through two department stores and a hotel in southern Thailand on Saturday night, killing two people and wounding many more.

The blasts occurred at the Odean and Big C stores, as well as the Lee Garden Hotel in Songkhla province’s Hat Yai city, the largest city in southern Thailand.

Television news reports said four people had been killed in the blasts and 30 wounded, although police could not confirm the figure.

TV news showed images of bloodied victims lying in restaurants or being led to safety by rescue personnel amid vehicles burning in streets strewn with shattered glass and overturned tables and chairs.

One body was shown covered with a white sheet next to an overturned motorcycle. Dozens of other motorcycles and larger vehicles also appeared to be destroyed.

“There are injured people, but it is too early to know how many,” one police official said.

The blasts erupted in an area popular with foreign tourists.

Security forces have cordoned off the areas around the blast sites and jammed mobile phone transmissions, police said.

Mobile phones have been frequently used to detonate bombs in Thailand’s south.

Parts of Songkhla province are under martial law as the government struggles to contain an Islamic insurgency that has killed more than 1,400 people since January 2004, mostly in the three southern-most Muslim-majority provinces bordering Malaysia.

The blasts occurred the same day that the military held a meeting with some 1,000 villagers in the south in a bid to end the long-running violence.—AFP