Bombings kill 2, wound 42 in Thai south

Gunmen on a motorcycle fired bullets and threw a home-made bomb at a group of people in a packed restaurant around noon in Narathiwat, killing a civilian and a policeman and wounding 12 others.

Less than two hours later, a bomb hidden in a car exploded outside a nearby hotel, injuring 23 people, police said. Both attacks took place in Sungai Kolok, a thriving town bordering Malaysia.

Famous for racy nightlife and popular with Malaysian tourists, Sungai Kolok has been the target of repeated bombings by ethnic Malay rebels over the past five years, hurting local trade and tourism.

In Pattani province, six defence volunteers and a police officer were wounded late on Tuesday when unknown assailants tossed a home-made bomb at a security checkpoint, police said.

The attacks took the number of known casualties to 61 in just over 24 hours in Muslim-dominated Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani provinces, where violence has claimed more than 3,600 lives since January 2004.

A bomb hidden in a motorcycle and parked next to a bank was detonated during a Buddhist festival in Pattani on Monday evening, injuring 17 people, five seriously.

The rubber-rich region, just a few hours drive from some of country's biggest tourist hotspots, was an independent Malay Muslim sultanate before it was annexed by Thailand in 1909.

Despite flooding the deep south with tens of thousands of police, soldiers and security guards, the government has made little progress towards quelling the unrest, which no group has claimed responsibility for.

(Reporting by Surapan Boonthanom; Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat in Bangkok; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)