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Police: Bomb kills journalist in southern Thailand

By SUMETH PANPETCH,Associated Press Writer AP - Friday, August 22

BANGKOK, Thailand - A reporter was killed and at least 20 other people wounded when a bomb exploded Thursday night in Thailand's southern border town of Sungai Golok, police said.

The bomb, hidden in a car, was detonated after police, reporters and onlookers were lured to the scene by an earlier smaller bomb on a motorcycle that exploded without hurting anyone, according to police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.

The tactic is a common one in bombings in the south, where the blasts are usually attributed to Muslim separatists who have been carrying out an insurgency against the government for almost four years.

The reporter who was killed worked for the country's biggest newspaper, Thai Rath, said Thai TV Channel 9, whose own reporter was also seriously injured. Also among the wounded, who included civilians, was the town's police chief, police said.

The bomb on the motorcycle, which was parked across from a restaurant, exploded at about 9:30 p.m. (1430 GMT), and the car bomb about 20 minutes later.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in Thailand's predominantly Muslim southern provinces since early 2004, when a separatist movement flared after a lull of more than two decades.

The government has made little progress in curbing the violence despite the presence in the south of nearly 40,000 police and soldiers. Drive-by shootings and bombings occur almost daily.

More than 90 percent of Thailand's 65 million people are Buddhists, and many of the country's Muslims have long complained that they are treated as second-class citizens.

The southern Thais are the same ethnicity as Malays across the border in Malaysia and share the same religion, culture, food and language.

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