YALA (Thailand), March 31: Three bomb attacks minutes apart killed 10 people and wounded more than 100 on Saturday in the main town in Thailand’s insurgency-hit far south.

The blasts hit the centre of Yala town around midday as families were out shopping, in the most deadly attack in five years in the Muslim-majority south of mainly Buddhist Thailand.

Several shop houses near the blast sites were set on fire and many parked cars and motorcycles were damaged by the powerful explosions.

“There were three bombs that exploded, the first is a car bomb and the second and third bombs were hidden in motorcycles,” said Colonel Pramote Promin, spokesman for the southern army region.

Bomb squad officers were seen inspecting the mangled car wreckage at the site of the car bomb as fire-fighters doused blazes nearby.

Rescue workers helped bloodied victims and searched for other wounded people as smoke filled the street. Ten people were in critical condition with severe burns, the public health ministry said.

A Yala city policeman added: “The bombs went off about 10 minutes apart.”

A nurse in the emergency unit of Yala provincial hospital said nine dead and 112 wounded had been admitted, but police later said the death toll had risen to 10.

One policeman was wounded in a separate motorcycle bomb attack in Mae Lan district of neighbouring Pattani province, police said.

A complex insurgency, without clearly stated aims, has plagued Thailand’s far south near the border with Malaysia since 2004, claiming thousands of lives, both Buddhist and Muslim, with near-daily bomb or gun attacks.

However, they are rarely as deadly as Saturday’s explosions.

The insurgents are not thought to be part of a global jihad movement but are instead rebelling against a long history of perceived discrimination against ethnic Malay Muslims by successive Thai governments.

A string of shootings in Yala province left 10 people dead in August 2007, while nine people were killed by a bomb in a village in January last year, also in Yala.

Struggling to quell the unrest, authorities have imposed emergency rule in the region, which rights campaigners say effectively gives the army legal immunity.

Hotel fire claims five lives Five people were killed and dozens injured in a fire on Saturday at a hotel in Hat Yai, the largest city in southern Thailand, officials said.

The blaze broke out at the Lee Gardens Hotel in downtown Hat Yai, which is a popular destination with tourists from neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.

Four men and one woman died in the fire, Songkhla provincial governor Grisada Boorach said. He said 336 were injured, of whom 28 were in hospital.

The cause of the fire was being investigated, the governor said.

City mayor Prai Pattano earlier said the fire was apparently caused by a gas explosion in the basement of the building.

Prai also said more than 300 were injured but most were not seriously hurt and had been discharged.

Most of those injured suffered from smoke inhalation, many in the hotel’s large shopping arcade.

Police Lieutenant Phuvadol Viriyanarangkul said foreign tourists were among those injured but there were no details on them so far.

Two Russian tourists were killed in a fire at a hotel in Bangkok earlier this month.

Thailand is a tourist magnet but its image as the “Land of Smiles” has been tested in recent years by deadly political unrest, devastating floods and more recently a bungled bomb plot involving Iranian suspects.—AFP