71 wounded with 12 in critical conditions… Coordinated attacks… Car bomb + a bomb planted in a motorbike.
Suspected insurgents, blending in with some 300 village headmen and officials, set off a car bomb near the venue of a monthly meeting in Sukhirin district yesterday.Seventy people were hurt in an attack police said was meant to inflict maximum damage.
At least 12 of the victims were in critical condition. A woman had been reported as dying from the explosion, but authorities said she was still fighting for her life at Sukhirin Hospital.
The homemade explosive was packed inside a fire extinguisher weighing about 50 kilograms and placed inside a sedan parked alongside the personal vehicles of officials attending the meeting.
Minutes later, a second bomb tied to a motorbike was detonated near a teashop. A third blast was heard soon after, but it was an exploding tyre, not a bomb. (Nation)
That’s a serious and painful wake up call… Even though the security has improved over the last months (see Bangkok Pundit who has statistics of violence in the South).
4 or 5 years ago I remember discussing CCTV installation at hot spots in the south as being one positive step that could make a serious difference in the ability of militants to carry out their drive-by shootings, bombings and what have you as well as aid authorites in identification of suspect vehicles, information gathering etc. More recently I read several articles where high ranking officials stated that CCTV would indeed be used in the south. But since then……what? Does anyone know [1] if they ever installed ANY CCTV cams? [2] if they had a budget for CCTV and if so what became of it?