April 4, 2012
PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Thailand said Wednesday its security services have to "work harder" after a triple car bomb attack demonstrated the increasing sophistication of militant tactics in the violence-plagued south.
"Right now it seems to us that it's more professional, the way they do it," Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said after the bombings Saturday killed 15 people and injured hundreds.
"The agencies that are taking care of the situation in the south should be more careful and work harder," he told reporters covering a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Cambodia.
But despite the latest carnage, Surapong rejected a suggestions the violence was escalating.
"We see that it's always like that in the south," he said.
Army chief General Prayut Chan-O-Cha said Monday the country was fighting against more than 3,000 Muslim militants waging a shadowy insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives since the violence flared in 2004.
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.
Struggling to quell the unrest, authorities have imposed emergency rule in the region, which rights campaigners say effectively gives the army legal immunity.
